Do not underestimate carpenter ants because they can destroy your house. These ants are larger than regular ants, and they live in moist, hollow or decaying wood. Their colonies can be found in tree trunks and in the wooden frames of houses. Carpenter ants make passageways through their colony by cutting galleries into its wood. They'll weaken the foundations of your house and increase your risk of injury if you don't do anything about them. Here are some tips to reduce or get rid of carpenter ants in your home:
•Look for sawdust trails: You won't be able to get rid of carpenter ants if you don't know where they nest. Since carpenter ants live in wood, they often leave sawdust trails behind that lead to their nest. Look for these sawdust trails, and take note of the nest's location. There may be several nests around your area, so take note of all their locations.
•Listen for crunching noises: Another way to look for carpenter ant nests is to listen for crunching or crinkling noises. You can listen closely on your floor or on the frame of your house to locate their nest. If you can't hear anything, try placing a sweet bait on suspect areas, and then follow the ants when they take the bait. You have to be extremely patient to do this because the ants won't easily catch the scent of the bait if you place it too far from their nest.
•Care for your lawn: Make your lawn or yard unattractive to carpenter ants by removing dead stumps and piles of woods away from your house, and keeping the lawn trimmed (Learn how to mow the lawn properly). You should also clear tree branches, bushes, and other plants, and make sure that they don't make contact with the house. The house's wooden frame also shouldn't make contact with the soil. Carpenter ants can travel more than 200 yards away from their nest, so consider this when deciding what parts of your lawn to tend to.
•Use boric acid: Boric acid is a chemical that can be used as an insecticide. It usually exists in the form of white powder with colorless crystals. It is considerably safe for humans, but it shouldn't be inhaled by infants and people with poor health. Mix three tablespoons of boric acid in a cup of warm water, and add half a cup of sugar to attract the ants. Put the solution in a dish and place it near the ants' nest. You may also soak cotton balls in it, and then place them around the nest for the ants to feed on.
•Try white gravel: Put white gravel around your house to control carpenter ants and other insects. Carpenter ants hate white gravel because it is very dry, and they like moist places. The gravel serves as a natural barrier against the ants. They'll find it very difficult to get inside your house if they have to crawl across white gravel first before they can do so.
•Replace the foundations of your house: If you have hundreds of winged carpenter ants surfacing from the basement, then there's a big nest of them in the foundations of your house. In this case, you have to replace the foundations of your house after exterminating all the ants. Carpenter ants can bore hundreds of holes into the foundations, making your house structurally unsound.
•Take the battle outside: Search your home for likely carpenter ant nests. If you can't find any, then the nest is probably outside, in stumps, trunks of trees, or decaying piles of wood. Apply a barrier insecticide outside your home to keep the ants away. Next, find the nest, and then either use insecticides on the nest or drench it in boiling water. There could be several carpenter ant nests around your house, so you have to find them all to solve the problem.
•Place a bait, then spray: Luring carpenter ants outside their nests could be a potential problem because they are known to survive several months without eating. Still, placing sweet baits near the entrance of their nest might draw some of them out. When this happens, spray the ants and the nest with an aerosol insecticide to kill a lot of them in one shot. Don't get your hopes up too high though, because many carpenter ant nests are very deep. The insecticide may be able to poison the entrance of the nest, but it may not be able to go deep enough to kill the eggs.
•Drill holes: You likely have a large colony of carpenter ants in your home if you have more than 20 winged ants during the spring. In this case, it's a good idea to just drill holes into the wall of your house to penetrate their nest. Next, dust the nest with boric acid and then spray it with an aerosol insecticide to make sure that the ants receive all the poison. Be very careful when drilling holes into your house though, because you could cause a lot of damage and risk injury. This method is also not an option for people who rent.
Hiring Professionals to Get Rid of Carpenter Ants
If you're certain that there's a huge colony of carpenter ants in your house or nearby, then it's best to hire ant control professionals to do the job for you. Schedule an initial inspection with your prospective ant control company, so they know exactly where the ants nest. Next, schedule a second visit where the people you hire can treat the nests around your house. Finally, schedule another inspection after a month to know if you've gotten rid of the ants for good. In addition, renters should notify their landlords of the carpenter ant problem. Emphasize the dangers these insects pose to the structure of the house, so that your landlord can act quickly to address the problem.
The best ant control professionals do very thorough house inspections. Tell them where you've seen a bunch of the ants before, so the pest control agents can quickly determine where they nest. Once the agents determine the location of their nest, they will probably drill holes and then treat the area with insecticides.
Do not hesitate to call professionals if you can't solve your carpenter ant problem yourself. When it comes to these insects, it's always better to be safe than sorry. A few bucks don't matter if you can guarantee the safety of your house and your life. If you learned from this article you'll surely want to learn how to get rid of ants.