Help solve a pest problem in the mountains!
April 28, 2017 8:20 AM   Subscribe

A friend and neighbor has a question about pest control on her property in the mountains west of Boulder, CO. I pointed her towards this forum, but she is rather computer-averse, so I will ask in her stead. She is having trouble with a variety of pests coming into her house, such as mice, bugs (like crickets and darkling beetles), and even small reptiles! I've been there, and it is not evident where the ingress point is, although it would appear that they are getting in under the house, but above the foundation. Hopefully you can help her find the help she needs.

Her house is surrounded by decking on one side and a two foot border of ~2" granite rocks on all other sides. The deck boards have been removed to check that area of the foundation, but the rock border is filled up to just above the bottom of the siding, and would be a lot of work to move it all for inspection. From what I saw, it appears that the house overhangs the foundation along some walls, which seems like an obvious problem. She would like to find someone knowledgeable about how houses are built, and how pests can find their way in, to target the most likely location before moving forward.

She has tried a few pest control companies around the Boulder area, and all they are willing to do is poke around a little bit and offer to set up bait traps. She seems pretty frustrated with the state of the industry around here! What she is really looking for is a tenacious old-school sleuth that will look at where the pests are found inside the house to figure out where they might be getting in then getting on their hands and knees outside and find the hole. I offered my help in digging out the rocks where necessary, since I don't think shoveling rocks will sweeten the deal for a pest expert!

So, first of all, does anyone have any specific recommendations for someone in the Boulder/Denver area that will come up to help?

Failing that, what might she do to find such a person? She'd rather avoid calling 50 pest control outfits that all seem to operate the same way. How to find the foundation expert that can find the problem?

Thanks for your time and advice!
posted by Don_K to Home & Garden (4 answers total)
 
I wonder if maybe a handyman would be more helpful than a pest control person? I mean, sealing up holes and replacing grating on vents, etc. are something a handyman would do. If you hired a handyman to weatherproof your house, these are some of the tasks he or she might do.

After that is done, a pest control person would be a lot more effective at getting rid of any remaining pests in the house.
posted by purple_bird at 9:33 AM on April 28, 2017 [2 favorites]


How old is the house? What kind of landscaping does she and her neighbors have? How close are they to larger open spaces/ parks/ forests? These unwanted guests are coming in from somewhere, so in addition to finding places to block their entry, controlling/ limiting their adjacent habitat as much as is possible/ feasible/ desirable may be another path.

We're in New Mexico, and we get plenty of insect intruders of the beetle variety, despite our house being relatively new. My parents-in-law also live in our area, and their house is also relatively new (both circa 2005), but theirs seems to be built with more attention to detail and over-all quality, yet they also get similar seasonal beetle intruders. Neither house has any cracks or gaps that are notable, but every morning in the spring and summer, we expect to find some new insect downstairs. My parents-in-law sprayed some deterrent/ poison around their house to keep insects out, and that seemed to have reduced the number of intruders. We have mouse traps in the garage, and ant bait traps in the house. Every morning, we check for beetles and sweep them out.

In short, we've come to expect that this is part of living in our part of New Mexico, but we don't get mice and lizards inside, which would be more than the beetles.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:44 AM on April 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


Get a cat? You can usually get good mousers from rural swap meets and flea markets.

It's probably hundreds of holes about the size of a dime or nickel. You can fix those, but it's expensive because it's a pain in the ass and takes forever, time is money etc. I'd advise her to do her own detective work, all it really takes is some time and a flashlight, maybe reading up about rodent habits and signs.

If it's an old house it will basically never be sealed for more than a season anyway.
posted by SaltySalticid at 1:01 PM on April 28, 2017


Response by poster: Thanks for the answers everyone. My neighbor is likely going to hire a handyman to look for holes. A good mouser cat wouldn't help much in this case because the mice are in the walls and the bait in her mousetraps hardly gets touched. Also, the darkling beetles are as bad of a problem. First, find and plug the holes, then spray for the beetles.
posted by Don_K at 7:02 AM on May 1, 2017


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