When you’re walking around your nice, cozy home do you ever take a moment to ponder what’s going on underneath it in the crawlspace? (FYI – not all homes are on a crawlspace but in the south, there’s a fair amount that are.)
If you’re like me, you probably don’t give it much thought. I’m more worried about what we’re going to do for dinner tonight or if my son is going to accidentally knock my daughter out when they’re running around upstairs.
However, you might want to have an idea of what’s happening under there! Besides all the utilities and plumbing that reside down there, you could have rats, mice, roaches, termites, flies, ants, and wood-destroying fungi taking up residence there too!
Thus, what steps can you do to keep these unwanted and often very destructive pests out of your home’s crawlspace (and consequently out of your living space)?
How To Keep Pest Out Of The Crawl Space?
Let’s look at 3 ways to help mitigate these issues:
Keep your home’s foundation sealed
If you want to keep the rats and mice out of the crawl space, to begin with, you won’t wake up in the middle of the night to have a large Norway rat greet you in the kitchen when you go to get a drink of water.
Make sure that your crawl space door is in good repair, your foundation vents have screens, and are fitted tightly in place. Also, there are no gaps around utility penetrations that lead into your crawl space. This may sound obvious (but isn’t most good advice?) but it’s easier to keep them out than to battle rodents and other pests once they get established.
Keep your crawlspace dry
If you’ve ever been to the desert or if you’ve watched nature documentaries on the desert, you’re probably well aware that life struggles to flourish there for one simple reason, ‘the lack of water.’
Rats, termites, cockroaches, and fungi all need a fair amount of water to thrive. Crawl space moisture control can be done with the help of proper ventilation. It can also be done through encapsulation since in the humid south ventilation is just letting warm, moist air into the crawl space and contributing to the moisture problem.
Thus, you can greatly reduce the likelihood of many pests including destructive termites and wood-destroying fungi.
Keep your crawlspace clean
A clean crawl space might sound like an oxymoron, but clean is somewhat of a relative term. By clean we mean having a proper vapor barrier (a plastic liner that keeps moisture from the soil from coming up onto your home’s substructure) and keeping it free of clutter and debris.
Sure it’s tempting to store cardboard boxes and stuff that doesn’t fit in the garage into the crawlspace. However, you’re just giving pests more places to live and more potential things for them to eat. Termites like to eat cardboard and scrap wood from a bathroom remodel just as much as they do wooden substructures. And rats & mice love to use a variety of household items as nesting material.
Spencer Pest Services – Your Pest and Crawl Space Moisture Control Partner
There’s a lot (potentially) going on underneath your feet. Let Spencer Pest Services inspect your home today and come up with a game plan for crawl space moisture control and to keep the rodents and bugs out! Or if they have already unfortunately taken up residence, give them a notice of eviction starting today!
