Keep Pests Away from Your Home

We’ve covered before how you can keep pests out of your home and how you can get rid of dust mites in particular, but now we want to share with you how to get rid of the pests on the outside of your home and how you can keep them from coming inside.

There are any number of things you can do to keep the exterior of your home clean of pests and make it inhospitable for them to live there. Most of these are simple jobs, but the more of them you do, the more effective your pest prevention will be.

Clear Away Debris

One of the best ways to keep pests that are outside your home from coming inside is to make sure that there are no good hiding spots for them near the house. If you live in a house with fireplace, then you may have stack of wood near your home. That needs to be moved some distance from your home to keep pests away from the house.

The leaves in your yard, old rags that you may use to clean your home with and other debris near your house needs to be kept away from the actual building. If you rake leaves, then don’t rake them up against the house. It’s best to just bag them up or burn them to get rid of them entirely, but if you need to rake them somewhere, then just rake them away from your home, as far away from it as possible. Just know that where you move the leaves to, pests are likely to take up residence there.

Pressure Wash Your Home and Driveway

A very effective way to keep your house and driveway looking clean is to have them pressure washed. You can do this yourself with your own tools or by renting a pressure washing system. Or you can hire a cleaning company to do the pressure washing for you. Pressure washing tears way dirt and destroys the homes of pests by making your home inhospitable for them. By cleaning the driveway of leaves and dirt with a pressure washing system, you make it harder for pests to find a place to stay. You also give your home’s exterior a beautiful look that improves property value and the overall aesthetic of your neighborhood.

You can have pressure washing done as often as once a week, if you like, and the more often you do this kind of cleaning, the less likely it will be that pests will be getting into your home. Be careful about where you pressure wash and how powerful the spray is, as you can damage your home and peel paint off, if you are not cautious.

Clear Away Brush

If you have trees or bushes in your yard, then you want to do more than just pick up leaves and get rid of them. You also need to remove brush as it falls in your yard. It may fall on your house as well, and you should get rid of the sticks, limbs and twigs as you find them. The more of these you clean up, the less likely it is that pests will consider your home a nice place to live.

If you are cleaning up brush often and you want to cut down on your workload there, then you can always have your trees trimmed. Cutting back the branches or even removing some trees will save you considerable work and make your home less prone to insect invasions. Many insects feed on trees, and if you take away their food source near your home, they are not nearly as likely to go from that food source into the food sources inside your house.

Spray for Pests

You can use some pest control products around your home as well and create a perimeter that keeps pests away. We are not just talking about spraying when you see bugs, but rather laying down insect killing powders and other bug control methods that kill the pests inside your property and keep out the ones outside your property. There are a lot of these sprays and powders that are effective for months at a time, so you don’t have to apply them too often.

Be sure to check the directions on the packaging to see how long it is supposed to be effective for, and also consider that rain and other inclement weather can disperse the pest control and make it less effective. That means that you may need to reapply it after bad weather. If you find a really good pest control application, though, then you should only need to use it a couple times a year to keep the pests at bay.

Also be sure to examine what pests the treatment is designed to deal with. Some of them target ants, mosquitos, roaches, weevils or other specific pests and may not target everything that is trying to get into your home.

Check for Signs of Pests

All of these measures we have listed here are very effective at getting rid of pests and keeping them away. However, you still need to keep your eyes open for signs of pests near your house. Look for nests, signs of tunneling and other indications that pests are trying to get into your home or are hanging out near it. You should do what you can to get rid of pests as you notice them, and if the methods you are using are not effective enough, then call in professional pest control to take care of it for you. Talk to your pest control expert about what things you can do around your home to keep pests away

Once you are actively working to keep pests away from your home, then you should start to see fewer pests both inside and outside your home. Remember that if you put in the work on your home’s exterior to keep pests away, your home will have far fewer pests inside it.