Pest Control in Lancaster, MA

Walking a riverside lot

A lot that runs toward the river can have a cellar window, a crawl-space vent or a low door at grade, and these are the entries the walk checks first at ground level. The foundation line is walked all the way round, because a gap at one corner is no reason to skip the others.

Plants and stored material against the foundation are moved for the walk, and the advice is to keep the ground below the siding clear, so that the wall can be seen and sealed.

The house, the cellar and the attic

The walk goes from the attic down to the cellar rather than the other way. The attic is checked for the overwintering insects UMass describes, the top-floor walls for gaps at the frames, and the cellar for the openings that carry cables and pipes into the house. Each opening is recorded by its position, so the sealing can be repeated and compared from one autumn to the next.

Outbuildings, garages and workplaces

UMass names sheds, office buildings and warehouses among the sites where these stink bugs overwinter. A Lancaster lot with a shed or a shop is walked and listed as a set of separate buildings. A shared wall between a garage and the house is checked at the joint and at the door seal.

A workplace on the lot is walked with the owner, because the spaces that need sealing are often not the ones staff use every day.

Questions to ask before the visit

Ask for the business name, the technician's name and the licence details on request by phone. The Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources is named for the licence. Say which rooms or spaces have shown insects, and when, so the walk begins in the right place.

Sealing the cellar and the sill

The sill, where the house wall rests on the foundation, is the joint most often missed on a lot that has been landscaped. The walk looks for gaps there, along the cellar wall and around each pipe and cable that comes through it. A gap at the sill is recorded by its position from the nearest corner, so the next check can find it without a search.

Sealing is planned from the inside of the cellar and the outside of the wall, so that the material goes where the gap is and not only where it is easy to reach.

What a Lancaster caller should expect at the walk

A walk takes the time the building needs. The technician will go through the attic, the rooms with insects, the cellar and the outside of each wall, then the outbuildings, and will write the list as the walk goes. The homeowner is shown the list before the technician leaves, and any entry that cannot be closed is marked with the reason.

A homeowner who wants to be present is welcome to walk the route with the technician, because the places the homeowner has noticed are often the places the walk needs to see first.