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How to Ant-Proof Your Home

3 min read

Ants living in your home is just gross. When the problem becomes overwhelming, you should call your expert Pest Authority of Sandhills to deal with it. But for those lesser infestations, you have a number of options to keep pests away from getting near you, your family, and your food.

Shut Them Out

The ants are getting in somehow, somewhere. It’s up to you to find out where. Your examinations may find more than one opening while some entrances might be extremely tough to identify. In fact, you might not even find all of the openings until you track a trail of ants coming and going in and out of your kitchen or living room.

Regardless of the number and types of entrances that exist, you need to shut them down fast. Once you locate all of the possible access routes, seal them up with putty, plaster, glue, or silicone caulk. Just be sure that the material you use is designed to hold up for the long term, so the infestation doesn’t happen all over again in the weeks to come.

Check For Cracks

Once you’ve sealed up all of the openings where you suspect the ants are sneaking in, check around the house for any alternate routes they might try to get back in. So check around your home for any cracks, gaps, fractures, and other openings around your windows, doors, and in walls. These openings should be sealed up anyway as you are probably losing energy efficiency when you run your HVAC system during the hotter and colder months of the year.

Checking for cracks will do multiple benefits for your home and keep ants from getting in and your climate-controlled air from getting out.

Barrier Options

Maybe you don’t have the ability to caulk or seal up the entrances through which the ants are marching in and out of your home. You could take a more unconventional approach to solving your ant problem by laying down certain types of barriers in front of and around these openings. The materials you choose should be considered carefully, not just for the efficacy of preventing the ants from getting inside, but also for the health and safety of family and pets.

You could sprinkle everything from salt to talcum powder to diatomaceous earth in front of the entrance, creating a barrier that will drive the ants back. These substances may seem simple and even ineffective, but they can actually be very useful in killing the ants.

That’s because these powdery forms draw moisture from the bodies of the ants, effectively killing them as they walk through. But be careful you don’t allow kids or pets near these powders. They are harmless if touched but you don’t want anyone inhaling, licking, tracking it through the house.

If, for some reason, you don’t have any access to these things, you could just put tape across the outer areas of these entrances. The adhesive on the tape will trap the ants and keep them from getting inside the house.

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