Tips for eradicating bed bugs

Bed bugs are more than a nuisance. They can also create health hazards for humans and pets.

The most challenging part of dealing with a bed bug problem is they are very difficult to see because of their size. On a good day, one of the little creatures could be smaller than a pencil eraser. They are also great little hiders that are able to find refuge in the smallest of cracks and crevices. Oh, they love to create their homes in mattresses/bedding and furniture cushions. Hence, the name “bed bugs.”

Since they reproduce quickly and can create serious health hazards, you can’t live with them. You have to take steps to get rid of them as soon as you know they exist. To help you in that endeavour, here are seven (7) tips for eradicating bed bugs. Note: These tips are listed in order to represent how bug extermination from a professional exterminator like Exterminateurs Associés might be considered a last resort option.

Initially, it will be very difficult for you to realize bedbugs have come home to roost in your home. When they first arrive, they are very good about hiding their whereabouts as they set up home. The first sign you have a bed bud problem might well be when they start biting you or your family members.

When you get that first indication the bugs are among you, you need to find out where they are nesting. There are two signs for which you can be looking. First, you should be looking for larger concentrations of bugs. That’s a good indication the nest is nearby. Second, these little nuisances will give out a “musky” odour when there is a large concentration of them in a small area.

Areas of concern would be baseboards, furniture cushions, under the mattress, electrical outlets, areas of concentrated trash (stack of newspapers, etc.), and wall and furniture cracks.

After you figure out the source or sources of the problem, you need to contain it and prevent it from getting worse. Remember, these bugs reproduce very quickly. A small, manageable problem can very quickly turn into a huge infestation.

Your containment efforts should include vacuuming up infested areas and cleaning all surfaces and materials that are connected with the infested area. Everything you can identify as infected should be sealed in plastic bags until discarded or washed. You would want and need to toss all vacuum cleaner bags and dispose of anything you don’t really need.

After addressing the source of the problem and containing it, you need to get ready to treat infested areas. That should include putting away books, papers, clothes that are lying around, disposing of all trash, and removing loose items from infested areas.

After doing the initial cleanup, you should consider sealing cracks (floor, ceiling, wallpaper, furniture), sealing up of electrical outlets (favourite bedbug hiding place), and moving all furniture, especially your bed or beds, at least six inches away from any walls and other furniture. This will prevent the bugs from being able to climb on cleaned furniture.

If you are going to attempt to eradicate bed bugs on your own, it’s best to try non-chemical options first. That is going to require deep cleaning of everything in areas where you saw at least one bug.

Hint: Bedbugs do not like extremely hot and cold conditions. You can kill them at hot temperatures of at least 115°F and cold temperatures below 32°F.

Here are a few deep cleaning suggestions to eliminate these bugs:

• Wash clothes and bedding materials in hot water with detergent for 30 minutes, subsequently drying everything at hot heat
• On hot days above 95°F, you can sit furniture and contaminated items outside all day long
• Put bags of contaminated items in the freezer at 0°F temperatures for at least four days
• Steam clean furniture, flooring, and walls with hot steam and cleaning chemicals

If you decide to try chemicals and insecticides, we would recommend the following: Pyrethrins and pyrethroids, pyrroles like chlorfenapyr, neonicotinoids nicotine), desiccants, and perhaps foggers and bug bombs. Note: Be wary of using chemicals that are harmful to humans.

As you put everything back together and or in place, you will want to make sure you eliminate potential hiding places. Do one more check for cracks and crevices. Don’t store paper items and clothing on counters or the floor. You might want to consider sealing mattresses and furniture cushions in anti-bug covers or plastic.

After you have identified hiding places, thoroughly cleaned everything, and sealed up possible hiding places, you need to spend the next few weeks monitoring the results. A daily check of the areas where the infestations were the worse could help you identify an ongoing issue before it becomes a major problem once again.

Many times, the elimination of these annoying little bugs is too much for a layperson to handle. Bug extermination can be a tedious and time-consuming process when administered by someone who has little to no experience in dealing with bed-bug issues.

If problems persist after your initial efforts, that would be the right time to consult with a professional exterminator like the Exterminateurs Associés. With the right knowledge base, experience, and chemicals, professional exterminators stand a much higher chance of success than you would, especially if your infestation were to be significant.

How to Prepare Your Home for Professional Mice Extermination

Are you tired of field mice scurrying around the house? Are they causing you and your family to lose sleep at night? There is no doubt having mice visitors annoys you and leaves you with a sense that you are living in a home that feels “unclean” because of mice excrement. Also, you must realize there is always a possibility you and your family are being exposed to issues with mice disease.  If you have been trying to get rid of field mice in the house on your own, you have likely discovered it’s a battle, one that you might not be winning. If that’s the case, it might be time to wave the white flag and call in the big guns, that being a professional mice exterminator like Exterminateurs Associés and here is how you can prepare your home for professional mice extermination.

After placing the emergency call for help with trying to get rid of field mice in the house, there are some steps you can take to get the home ready for the arrival of a professional mice exterminator. These steps are necessary if you want the professional exterminator’s mice control efforts to be effective. To that end, here are six steps you should follow:

Mice seek refuge in houses to escape the elements and look for food. If you pay attention and take a good look around the home, you should be able to locate the entry points mice are using to access your home. We would suggest looking for large wall/floor cracks, unsealed windows, openings in the basement/attic, and in the chimney. Also, mice are quite capable of crawling through pipes and plumbing fixtures.

Before the exterminator arrives, you should do what you can to seal entry points and remove nesting areas. Why? Once the mice are gone, you don’t want your little visitors coming back to haunt you and your family.

As the exterminator goes to work, they will want everything cleared out of the way so they can treat all the areas they believe need to be treated. Your de-cluttering efforts, to prepare your home for mice extermination, should include:

• Removal of all trash in the house
• Picking everything up off the floor and storing it in a safe place
• Clean out underneath sinks, beds, and low sitting furniture
• Wash all furniture coverings and bedding
• Sweep up dust and dirt wherever applicable

By the way, the exterminator will need to look under the house if there is a crawl space. You should remove any obstructions that would get in the way of them doing that.

As your professional exterminator surveys your house for a plan of attack, they need to be able to see clearly throughout the house. That includes under beds/sinks/furniture, in storage areas, and in the basement/attic. Your job is to make sure there is plenty of lighting so they can see and operate as quickly and efficiently as possible. You can furnish that light by opening window coverings and turning on lights.

The pesticides/chemicals the exterminator might choose to use could be toxic to humans. For the protection of you and your family, you will want to make sure that all food and drink items and completely sealed and stored out of harm’s way as much as possible. Since most of the exterminator’s efforts will be focused on flooring areas, storing food in cupboards as high up as possible is highly recommended.

You have to do everything possible to protect your kids from extermination products. You can do that by covering beds and cribs, storing toys and clothes in secure storage areas, and having the children removed from the premises during the treatment process. Your professional exterminator should be able to tell you how long the children should remain away from the home before safely returning.

Toxins and chemicals could also adversely affect your pets. If you have hamsters, cats, dogs, or any other type of four-legged critters, it would be a really good idea to see if a neighbour could provide your pet or pets with safe refuge until your exterminator says it’s safe for pets to return. If keeping them outside is feasible, you might also consider that option.

As a pre-emptive measure, you should inform your professional exterminators before they arrive (when you schedule for service) that you have children, pets, or both. They will use that information as they create a strategy to help protect your family from future mice disease and mice excrement issues.

You are within your rights to attempt to handle mice control on your own. However, caution is warranted if you decide to use chemicals. Perhaps, a far better option would be to put your safety and the safety of your family in the hands of professional mice exterminators.

If you are looking for a mice extermination in your area, Exterminateurs Associésv is the call to make. Our well-trained exterminators have all the knowledge and tools/products they will need to handle your mice problem effectively and efficiently. When you are ready, please give us a call for immediate response and service at prices that are affordable and competitive.

Tips for managing a cockroach infestation? 

Ah, those pesky cockroaches can be infuriating. It’s hard to find any redeeming value related to cockroaches in the home. To most people, the very sight of them elicits a range of emotions from fear to disgust and everything in between. If you are being victimized by a cockroach infestation, there are a couple of things on which you should be focusing. First, you need to figure out how you and your family might be accountable for the infestation. Second, you need to act fast because cockroaches can reproduce and grow at an alarming rate so the cockroach extermination can be done. 

Cockroaches need food and water to survive. They also prefer a warmer, darker, and dryer environment, which is why they are always looking for indoor passages. It’s your job to make sure your home is not an environment they would appreciate. 

To protect your house from a cockroach infestation, you have to start will getting into the habit of cleanliness. If you keep your food safely put away in sealed containers or the fridge, it would cut off a cockroach’s food supply. Also, you want to keep your floors and countertops wiped down and dry. Remember, a little bit of water can be a lot of water to the little cockroach. By the way, be on the lookout for plumbing leaks. That leaking water is a viable water supply for these little pests. 

Finally, you can do yourself a big favor by keeping your outdoor areas clean and garbage-free. If a cockroach doesn’t get the invitation of your trash and outdoor facet water, they will keep on marching to the next house.

The appearance of one cockroach in your home should set off alarms. Where there is one, there will surely be more in short order. Remember, cockroaches can reproduce very quickly. They lay 25 to 50 eggs a batch per female. The eggs of most species will hatch within a month. At that point, they are mobile and can quickly become a nuisance in mass. 

After hatching, it can take a cockroach 2 to 15 months to reach reproduction capability, depending on the species. Given the math, you can see that your window of opportunity to act could be short. If you see a couple of cockroaches over a day or two, eggs have likely been laid and you are weeks away from dozens of little critters running throughout your house, preparing to create more. 

Your goal is to get rid of your cockroach problem as fast as possible. How? The following five tips offer you enough alternatives that you should be able to find at least one that best suits your needs

Most home remedies include the use of household goods that act as poisons to cockroaches. Caution is warranted because some of these same chemicals can be poisonous to humans. 

An old standard is baking soda. The smell of chopped onions and baking soda is quite appealing to cockroaches. Unfortunately for them, ingesting the baking soda creates enough tummy gasses to cause a cockroach to internally explode and die.

If you use Borax as a laundry product, you are already armed with a lethal weapon in the eyes of a cockroach. Ingesting Borax mixed with water causes them to dehydrate and die within minutes. 

Another clever cockroach deterrent is lemon oil. They absolutely hate the very smell that humans love so much. If you get in the habit of using cleaning products containing lemon oil, they will quickly move on to other locations.

Bait traps or hotels offer a very fast remedy for a cockroach infestation. They can be either circular or tubular devices with an entrance and an embedded odor that cockroaches love. These devices also contain poisons that cockroaches will eat and carry back with them to their home base in your home. After passing the poison on to other members of the nest, you get to kill multiple roaches at the same time. 

Glue strips work for flies and mice. Why not cockroaches? You can purchase glue strips specifically designed for cockroaches with an embedded odor that draws them to the strip. Once they take that fatal step onto the strip, escape becomes impossible. They will struggle and eventually die from dehydration and lack of food. You can strategically place glue strips around appliances and plumbing fixtures for the best and fastest results.

Before and after an infestation, you should be diligent about checking your home for entry points for all kinds of pests. Every three months, take a tour of your home for potential issues. You can prevent initial entry by cockroaches if you can identify and seal off potential entry points with good caulking products. Places to look would include window/door gaps, cracked weather-stripping, and flooring/wall gaps and cracks. You might also want to check around built-in light fixtures.

If progress is slow and the potential for an infestation is increasing, it might be time to call a professional cockroach exterminator. Remember, a good cockroach exterminator can handle a current cockroach extermination problem, identify entry point issues, and advise you on how to protect your home in the future. The best result you can hope for is to say goodbye to cockroaches forever.  

Exterminateurs Associés is a top exterminators Montreal service provider. They can provide a wide range of professional pest extermination services, including cockroach extermination. If prevention is your goal, this is one of the best exterminators Montreal has to offer for quarterly prevention services.

Tips for eradicating bed bugs

Bed bugs are more than a nuisance. They can also create health hazards for humans and pets.

The most challenging part of dealing with a bed bug problem is they are very difficult to see because of their size. On a good day, one of the little creatures could be smaller than a pencil eraser. They are also great little hiders that are able to find refuge in the smallest of cracks and crevices. Oh, they love to create their homes in mattresses/bedding and furniture cushions. Hence, the name “bed bugs.”

Since they reproduce quickly and can create serious health hazards, you can’t live with them. You have to take steps to get rid of them as soon as you know they exist. To help you in that endeavour, here are seven (7) tips for eradicating bed bugs. Note: These tips are listed in order to represent how bug extermination from a professional exterminator like Exterminateurs Associés might be considered a last resort option.

Initially, it will be very difficult for you to realize bedbugs have come home to roost in your home. When they first arrive, they are very good about hiding their whereabouts as they set up home. The first sign you have a bed bud problem might well be when they start biting you or your family members.

When you get that first indication the bugs are among you, you need to find out where they are nesting. There are two signs for which you can be looking. First, you should be looking for larger concentrations of bugs. That’s a good indication the nest is nearby. Second, these little nuisances will give out a “musky” odour when there is a large concentration of them in a small area.

Areas of concern would be baseboards, furniture cushions, under the mattress, electrical outlets, areas of concentrated trash (stack of newspapers, etc.), and wall and furniture cracks.

After you figure out the source or sources of the problem, you need to contain it and prevent it from getting worse. Remember, these bugs reproduce very quickly. A small, manageable problem can very quickly turn into a huge infestation.

Your containment efforts should include vacuuming up infested areas and cleaning all surfaces and materials that are connected with the infested area. Everything you can identify as infected should be sealed in plastic bags until discarded or washed. You would want and need to toss all vacuum cleaner bags and dispose of anything you don’t really need.

After addressing the source of the problem and containing it, you need to get ready to treat infested areas. That should include putting away books, papers, clothes that are lying around, disposing of all trash, and removing loose items from infested areas.

After doing the initial cleanup, you should consider sealing cracks (floor, ceiling, wallpaper, furniture), sealing up of electrical outlets (favourite bedbug hiding place), and moving all furniture, especially your bed or beds, at least six inches away from any walls and other furniture. This will prevent the bugs from being able to climb on cleaned furniture.

If you are going to attempt to eradicate bed bugs on your own, it’s best to try non-chemical options first. That is going to require deep cleaning of everything in areas where you saw at least one bug.

Hint: Bedbugs do not like extremely hot and cold conditions. You can kill them at hot temperatures of at least 115°F and cold temperatures below 32°F.

Here are a few deep cleaning suggestions to eliminate these bugs:

• Wash clothes and bedding materials in hot water with detergent for 30 minutes, subsequently drying everything at hot heat
• On hot days above 95°F, you can sit furniture and contaminated items outside all day long
• Put bags of contaminated items in the freezer at 0°F temperatures for at least four days
• Steam clean furniture, flooring, and walls with hot steam and cleaning chemicals

If you decide to try chemicals and insecticides, we would recommend the following: Pyrethrins and pyrethroids, pyrroles like chlorfenapyr, neonicotinoids nicotine), desiccants, and perhaps foggers and bug bombs. Note: Be wary of using chemicals that are harmful to humans.

As you put everything back together and or in place, you will want to make sure you eliminate potential hiding places. Do one more check for cracks and crevices. Don’t store paper items and clothing on counters or the floor. You might want to consider sealing mattresses and furniture cushions in anti-bug covers or plastic.

After you have identified hiding places, thoroughly cleaned everything, and sealed up possible hiding places, you need to spend the next few weeks monitoring the results. A daily check of the areas where the infestations were the worse could help you identify an ongoing issue before it becomes a major problem once again.

Many times, the elimination of these annoying little bugs is too much for a layperson to handle. Bug extermination can be a tedious and time-consuming process when administered by someone who has little to no experience in dealing with bed-bug issues.

If problems persist after your initial efforts, that would be the right time to consult with a professional exterminator like the Exterminateurs Associés. With the right knowledge base, experience, and chemicals, professional exterminators stand a much higher chance of success than you would, especially if your infestation were to be significant.

How to keep rodents out of your home in winter?

Mice are annoying little creatures. They offer little to no value as a species yet serve as pests to the human population. Given their propensity for spreading diseases and causing damage, rats are not something you want wandering around your home. With wintertime fast approaching, you might want to start thinking about ways to protect your home from a rat invasion and need some help with pest control.

What you might not realize is rats hate the cold weather almost as much as we humans do. When the air gets cold, the rat population goes in search of a warm place to hibernate until spring. If you give them access to your home, you might end up with some unwanted rodents running about driving you and your family crazy.

Even if your home is reasonably secure from rodents, the pesky rats can still terrorize you from outside of your home. All the while, they will be looking for a way to enter your domicile.

Assuming you would prefer a quiet winter without rats inside or outside of your home, you might want to consider the following 8 tips for rodent management and prevention.

With winter approaching, the end of fall is a good time to survey the outside of your home for potential repair needs and help you with pest control. While going through the process, be wary of places where rats might enter your home. You need to keep in mind that a rat’s skeletal system will allow it to contort itself in many ways. Rats don’t need much of a hole or crack to enter a structure. You will want to pay particular attention to the lower part of the foundation. That’s where gaps in the dirt can create an entry point.

If you identify potential rat entry points, you need to get them sealed as quickly as possible. You can use exterior-grade caulk to close off holes and cracks of all sizes. Once you have your exterior secured, rats will move on in search of a neighbor who doesn’t take the same kinds of precautions. A highly motivated rat trying to survive a cold winter has no time to waste trying to get into homes were trying to find an entry point is futile. This is the key to good rodent winter control.

You need to know this about rats. They can chew through anything, including metal and rubber. They can also climb up slick surfaces. If you leave trash bags or cans outside, rats will see that as an invitation to dinner. If there is a food supply outside, they will stick around in hopes of eventually getting inside. To prevent rats from getting access to an outside food supply, you should keep your trash cans and bags inside a garage until your trash pick-up day.

Also, rats love tasty pet food for birds, dogs, and cats. If you have to leave food for your pets outside, put it in places that rats won’t be able to reach.

Once a rat gets into your house, they will make themselves at home if you are feeding them. They are rats. They don’t need much in the way of food. As long as you leave food and crumbs where they can reach it, they will be happy to accept your offering.

This alone should be an incentive for you to keep your home clean. As long as you wipe down counters, dispose of trash properly, and put all food items in your cabinets or fridge, rats won’t stay where they cannot get food.

It’s no secret that cats and rats are natural enemies. For cats, the pursuit and killing of a rat is a source of pride. If you are not averse to having pets in your home, a good, young, and active cat will be more than happy to keep your home free of rodents. Meanwhile, cats can offer you affection and entertainment as they go about being the finicky little creatures they were made to be.

You stay in your home because you enjoy the comforts of being in your home. Rats are like you in that regard. If they have a nice place to hide and a comfortable place to sleep, they are going to make themselves feel right at home.

You can make rats feel very uncomfortable if you leave them with no place to hide and sleep. That means eliminating clutter around your home. Isn’t doing a little extra housework worth the benefit of making rats feel unwelcomed?

If all else fails, rat traps do work. Your rat trap options include spring-loaded traps, glue traps, and rat poison. If you have any sympathy for little creatures, the spring-loaded trap is the most humane option. If set and baited properly, it will immediately kill rodent intruders. Glue traps and poison work, but the little creatures are going to suffer a long, tormented death.

If you have persistent issues with pest management and need some pest control in Montreal, you could certainly benefit from hiring a professional exterminator. A visit from a pest management professional about every six months could save you from the turmoil of trying to coexist with rodents and bugs.

If you are in the market for a professional exterminator near you, you should give Exterminateurs Associés a call. They offer fast and effective services, such a pest control at prices that are competitive and affordable. One visit and you will be able to sleep well at night.