Dealing with a Cockroach Infestation Efficiently

The last thing that you want to see in your home is the lowly cockroach, but for many people, cockroaches are a common issue. If you happen to notice a couple of these unpleasant pests crawling around your home, you can be sure that there are dozens more lurking in the cracks and other hidden spaces. Infestations come on quickly, and it’s vital that you act fast to take care of the bugs after you see them in your home.

Location Check

The first step to treating a possible roach infestation is to find the sites where roaches are most prevalent. You can do this by taking a flashlight and looking in locations such as behind the refrigerator, under the kitchen sink, around the baseboard of your home, in bathroom cabinets and any secluded location that has both food and water available.

Use a flashlight to spot the roaches in these hiding places, and you’ll quickly have a vague idea of where they are at around your home. You can pinpoint the worst spots by laying out glue traps in all the suspected locations and then comparing how many roaches you catch in each location after a day or two.

Bait and Poison

Now that you know where the worst spots are, lay out some gel bait traps, or some roach hotel poison traps in those locations. The little pests will eat the poison and go home to die. Once they die, other surrounding roaches will eat them and be poisoned as well. This is one of the best tactics to kill off a large population, the main downside is that you’ll have a bunch of poisoned roaches lying around your home that you have to clean up on a daily basis.

Boric Acid

Boric acid is another tool that you can use to cut down the roach population, but you have to use it strategically. Look for locations that roaches trail in and out of. In these spots lay down a thick line of boric acid. The roaches will dry out and die while crossing this path, and you’ll quickly end up with a heap of the little guys if you do it properly.

Seal it up

As you begin to make headway on your current infestation, you must take action to keep more of the bugs from getting into your home later on. Use the current infestation to try and pinpoint entry points on the outside of your home. Caulk up any gaps that you find while searching around, and eventually you’ll at least slow the influx of roaches into your home.

If all these techniques don’t work for you, your best bet is to hire a professional to come into your home and deal with an infestation. This is really the most effective way to handle a large population of roaches, and it should be what you do in most instances when you notice a problem in your home.