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Welcome again to another episode of the faith pest control Podcast. I’m Mike Stewart, your host. And we do this podcast as a community service for all the fine folks that live in Jasper, Georgia, Blairsville, Georgia, Blue Ridge, Georgia, big canoe and then north Georgia mountains. If you live north of Atlanta in the North Georgia area, and especially in Jasper, Georgia, we are your one stop shop for pest control because we have the pest expert, Fred Dally, who knows how to create a pest free home for you. And of course, one of the things that you can do, there’s a lot of things you can do and tips that you can take yourself to avoid problems. You know, an ounce of prevention is what they say. And so today, Fred’s gonna talk about some helpful tips that you need to know to have a pest free home. So Fran, are you ready to give us some of those juicy tips? I’m ready to go Mikey. All right, fire away. So we’re going to start off with fleas in the house. The main tip I can give you about fleas in the house is have your have your pet treated by a veterinarian, I tried to over the counter stuff for years and I’m I figured out I’m much better off financially and sanity wise, just letting the vet do what they do. But if you get fleas in the house, this is some helpful tips that that could help you get rid of them via the use of a pest control guy. But anybody that’s had fleas in the house knows that this is not a one and done. Proposition. So before your pest control guy comes if they don’t, if they don’t give you a list of stuff that they need done, here’s some stuff that’s going to help make their job easier, but it will give you better results. Their job will give you better results. If you prepare your house this way before they get there. The very number one item is clear all the floor surfaces. loose items, magazines, toys, small articles, clothes, that kind of stuff. Pick up out of the closet floor as well as under the beds and under the furniture. Key key hint right here is on the day of treatment. Vacuum all carpets, rugs and furniture including under the cushions of upholstered furniture, vacuum the wood and tile floors, paying special attention to the grooves and the cracks because that’s where the fleas will get down in on like hardwood or tile floor. When if you have a vacuum cleaner that has a bag, remove the bag, put it in a plastic tied up in a plastic like kitchen garbage bag and get it out of the house. cleaned thoroughly all the areas that are frequented by your pets. If you have cats, I mean we have cats they get everywhere they’re gonna get on your table, they’re gonna get on your countertop, they’re gonna set in the wind to seal all of those places need to be cleaned very well cleaned the basement and garage floors with soap and water. If pet spend time in those areas, and pay special attention because there’s an IF YOU If they’re like out in the garage or the basement, there’s going to be a crack between the foundation wall and the floor slab so pays particular attention to that because fleas will get down in there, wash and or dispose of all pet bedding. If you have an aquarium that needs to be covered up and turn the air pump off so it’s not sucking in insecticide and putting it down into the water. All the pets. I think that’s kind of an obvious one but all the pets need to be removed. Do not let pets or people really into the house until after the treatment dries. Which anymore most people use aerosols I think some people still will still use like a compressed air sprayer and spray liquid but most people now use aerosols anyway. So you’re probably looking at 30 minutes to an hour just being outside the outside the home. Have your pet treated if you can afford it at all. Have you tried Peter been treated by a veterinarian? It’s in my mind that’s not even a question.
Now after the treatment, this is critical every other day for a minimum of two weeks. You need to vacuum all the carpet, rugs, wood floors, tile floors and furniture. Minimum Every other day for two weeks. Again, if you have a vacuum cleaner that has an internal bag, remove the bag sealant and the plastic kitchen garbage bag and get it out of the house. Because you you will see is not there’s not much maybe to it, you’re gonna see some fleas for up to two weeks after the treatment, seeing the fleas after treatment is normal, and it’s not an indication of needing additional treatment. So we’re moving on from the fleas now picking up fallen and rotted rotting fruit in your yard. In North Georgia, especially right now this time of year right now, Yellowjackets and European Hornets are like at the peak of activity. So they a piece of rotting fruit is a meal for them. So you can just randomly pick up a piece of rotting fruit, you can actually pick a piece off the tree that could have an active European Hornet or Yellowjacket, eating some of that fruit and you can get stung, so just pay attention to the fruit pickup gaps under doors. And this is what I’m thinking of here is primarily entry doors, not necessarily overhead garage doors in the garage. I’ll address those in a minute. But gaps under the your your exterior doors in your home, especially in the wintertime. If you have a gap under there in a roach, a German and not a German Roach, and American Roach all also known in Florida as a Palmetto bug or waterbug. A lot of people will call them that up here. But you they only need a space of three millimeters, which is pretty darn small in order to enter your home, if they’re crossing that path, and they feel that warm air that indicates to them you know a different season. So they’re they’re gone going to try to get in, in that gap if it if it exists. So just pay attention to the gaps around the you know, your your, your exterior doors and your windows. Now gaps around garage doors. More importantly, on each side, each end of the garage door down where it meets the garage floor. There’s it’s common to find a hole between the between the garage door itself and the in the end the trim. You know, garage doors are not built to be airtight. So if you have a hole down at the ground level or the car or the garage floor or driveway level that you can stick your pinky finger in that’s large enough for a mouse to get in. They kind of like collapse or skeleton to get in those spaces. So the end and the another place that that can happen around your house instead of just to garages if you have a crawlspace then you have foundation vents. If there’s holes in the wire of the foundation vents. Now that those are without replacing the vent, it’s actually fairly easy to to repair, just get some quarter inch hardware cloth in input over it that way the foundation vent will still function, but the mice can’t get through there and they can’t chew chew through the hardware cloth. Torn screens. Very common up here, especially in spring time to get complaints about we call them no CIOMS. They’re actually my member. If my memory serves me correctly, I believe they’re called midges mid je s mages but they will come through the screen and nads. Especially older screens, there are newer screens that have a higher density. The holes are smaller, that supposedly prevent no CIOMS. The images and gnats from getting in. But if you have older screens
that have the larger holes, you might consider replacing them with newer screens with smaller holes but even the ones that small holes if they if they’re if they’re torn, you can let these flying insects in a biggie huge, huge huge here for ants. If you have trees and or shrubs that touch the house, you need to you need to figure out how to prune them. so that there’s no foliage touching the house. This can be problematic even for the Bug Guy if they’re not accustomed to looking for it. But ants will crawl up the trunk of the tree, crawl out the limb, this touching the house and get in the house. And you never see a trailing edge around the exterior perimeter of the house at all. Very frustrating if you’re not for the Bug Guy, if they’re not kind of used to anticipating that keep your gutters clean. The leaf litter and debris that accumulates in rain gutters is a haven for nesting ants AND and OR roaches to big roaches, Palmetto bugs, water bugs. So it’s very extremely helpful to to keep those clean, they need to be cleaned. We have ours clean twice a year, normally at the end of fall. And then the end of spring is when we have them cleaned. It seems to be adequate for us and we live where I live is very dense, very dense foliage we basically live in the woods. crawlspace ventilation moisture moisture control, especially in the crawlspace is critical for wood destroying organisms. And that’s that’s bug talk for termites, powderpost beetles and wood destroying fungus, if you will. You can’t necessarily fix a termite problem by changing the moisture content in the crawlspace. But you can very easily fix a beetle problem in a in a fungus problem in your crawlspace by controlling that moisture. Polyethylene is a good relatively cheap fix. And what what happens especially in older homes, is they weren’t they were not built? Well I mean two things they weren’t built to construction standards of today. And we know more today about ventilation than we did years ago. So controlling the ventilation in your crawlspace is very key especially for powderpost beetles or wood destroying beetles and wood destroying fungus spray foam insulation however breaks it may be for energy efficiency it it can be terrible for for inspect for the bug guy when he’s inspecting the house for or even even your own inspection of the house for termites and or other wood destroying organisms. Yeah because the the spray foam is not a precise operation they get overspray on stuff I don’t think that it’s not necessarily they try to just happens and generally in a crawlspace it really doesn’t matter. But for spray foam insulation, what you’re doing is you’re sealing that wood in on the you know, your first thought is well how can that be a bad thing two things that come to my mind and I’m of the opinion that wood needs breathe. It is dead at the point that it’s put in your house but it is still needs air to flow through it in my mind. And you can’t termites especially can get in the middle of the of the wood and before they ever come to the surface. And you for you to be able to see them and they the spray foam insulation can keep that hidden so you’re not going to see it in the bug guys got not going to see it when they come and do your annual termite inspection. They you could have a huge issue and not you not know it nor the bug guy or not, would not know it. Regrettably, I
have inspected not a lot but I’ve inspected some houses for people who’ve used the spray foam insulation as a method to hide termite damage. It was I was actually very shocked. This is a good one here. I think if you’re having a problem with ants, especially on your countertops, because kitchens and bathrooms are typically where you’re going to have issues anyway or where you may be feeding your pets but To answer social insects, so part of the family will go out and harvest food for the rest of the family and take it and take it back to to feed everybody in the nest. So when they when they when the family that goes out to find the food, when they identify a food source, they will create a trail, in minutes a scent trail, they will release a pheromone, that tells all the other family members that are going out to harvest food, where the food source is, if you just take regular dishwashing soap and a rag and wipe the counter down, you’re gonna eliminate that pheromone trail, you may not totally eliminate the ants, but you’re gonna you’re gonna prevent a lot of them from being on your countertop, because they’re not going to know that the food source the where the food source is. Because Because you’re eliminating the trail when you clean the countertop. Here at Faith pest control, we do offer a free consultation, we offer a 100% make you happy money back guarantee. Do you hire a faith pest control to get rid of any of your bugs, bug problems, and at the end of 30 days, you’re not 100% Happy, we’ll come back and we’ll retreat your home for free. And we’ll keep on trading it for free. And you tell us that you are happy. If that still doesn’t make you happy, we’ll give you back every penny you spent on the original treatment plus will pay you an additional $25 for your time and trouble just for fooling with this. Bottom line is I want you to be happy with the service that we provide. Or you will owe us a penny period. If you feel like what I’ve made make can even talk today if you feel like what I’ve said make sense. Call fates pest control today at 770-823-9202. And asked to speak to me Fred tally. I’ll be more than happy to speak with you and answer any questions you might have. Well, thanks, Fred. We appreciate all those helpful tips. You know, we do this podcast as a community service for all the fine folks in Jasper, Georgia and surrounding areas in north Georgia mountains. You can get this podcast and what you know what we want you to do is we want you to like it. We want you to share it. We want you to enjoy it. We want you to use it. And more importantly, we want you to subscribe to it where you get your favorite podcasts. We’re an Apple, Amazon, audible Spotify and Google anywhere at podcasts. Even at our website, you can listen from our website if you want to. You can listen on your phone, you can listen on your home devices, you can listen on your computer, hey, nowadays, you can actually listen on your television sets podcast, podcasting has become so huge and prevalent everywhere that people are doing it growing exponentially. And we have got hours of helpful tips to help you have a pest free home. So you call Fred anytime you have any questions if you live in the Jasper area, and be sure to let him know that you’ve heard his podcast and that you’re ready to do business with him. So give him a call. And we’ll see you next time on the faith pest control podcast.
