3 Fundamentals of Pest Control

3 Fundamentals of Pest Control

Pest control is far more than just a cookie cutter response to when pests invade a home or business. When serving a property, there are three fundamental goals of treatment: prevention, suppression, and eradication.  Each of these fundamentals incorporate different tools and methods to achieve the ultimate goal of pest control.

Prevention

Prevention is the most vital aspect of pest control. It involves the completion of actions that greatly reduce or eliminate the chance of a pest problem occurring. Pest prevention can even be divided into three subcategories: at-home prevention, preventative treatments, and responsive prevention. At-home prevention is typically completed by the residents of the home and involves taking steps to ensure that the home is void of conducive conditions for pests. This can include sealing cracks or crevices around your home, regular cleaning, ensuring food is properly sealed/not left out, and more. The next step in prevention is the application of preventative treatments by a pest control professional. This most commonly involves a maintenance plan in which treatments are done year-round to form a barrier around your home and stop pests from ever making their way inside. However, if pests have already found a way indoors, the kind of treatments change slightly to be responsive prevention services. This kind of prevention is essentially ‘preventative treatments,’ but it is done following an infestation in the home. The purpose of responsive prevention is to stop a pest problem from reoccurring – you can think of it as locking the door behind the pests after you kick them out.

Suppression

The suppression of pests involves the use of specific tools to reduce the population of pests in an around homes. It’s utilized in cases where pests have already invaded and often comes in the form of a simple trap such as sticky/glue boards. While suppression, in and of itself, does not solve pest problems, it is an integral part of controlling infestations when incorporated with preventative and eradication methods.

Eradication

Eradication is the complete destruction of a population of invading pests. It can only be done in response to a pest infestation and tends to be the most drastic form of pest control. Examples of eradication include heat treatments for bed bugs and ant bait. Bed Bug Heat Treatments – These heat treatments kill all bed bugs and their eggs within the treated area after only about 20 minutes. Ant Bait – Ant bait involves the application of gel and/or liquid treatments which are toxic to ants. After walking through the product or picking it up by mistaking it for food, the ants return to the colony. Once there, the products are easily spread from member to member, quickly eradicating the population at its source.

Pest Control Methods Designed for You

At Pointe Pest Control, we will work directly with you to help develop a pest control plan that fits your unique pest problem and addresses all your pest concerns with a combination of preventative, suppressive, and eradication treatments.