Roaches, ugh!!

[eyelikerancid]

Help!! I just bought my house about three weeks ago. I noticed a few dead roaches in the two ground-level rooms, one of which the crawl space opens into. The house was treated for insects prior to me purchasing it so I wasn't too surprised

Comments

[a2b3]

Keep the house meticulously clean (throw out the trash every day(as far away from the house as possible), clean up drips and spills, keep all food closed up well, dust and mop/sweep often). Was the outside treated for insects as well? Cause sometimes you have a whole colony living under something, or in doors (I'm sure my external kitchen door has an entire colony of ants; yesterday, a whole group picked up a fish bone and tried to get it into a whole that must be their doorway).
However, I live in an apartment near the garbage chute, and no matter how clean the inside of my house is, they're all around, slipping in under the door because its filthy outside.

[eyelikerancid]

I've been keeping the house very clean (and we've only been living in it about a week). I think there is in fact a colony living underneath. I don't know if the outside was treated--my guess would be no, due to the quantity of insects there are.

[a2b3]

There probably is, they're pretty seedy. I meant keep it really clean after you get it treated again, if you do. I don't know what treatments you could get, though (especially pet friendly).
Good luck, they really are unpleasant.

[oxymoron02]

Anyone in your household small enough to get around in the crawl space?

Liberal application of Borax will kill them. They'll walk through it and ingest it when cleaning themselves. It's toxic if ingested in a large enough dose, and for bugs that's not much. Not an overnight fix, but I'd be heartily surprised if you laid down a lot of Borax and didn't kill them all inside a month.

It's also toxic if ingested by your furry friends, but the dosage is larger. That's why you should put it in the crawl space.

As an added benefit, it's also toxic to termites should they ever choose to pop up through the soil in your crawl space.

You can hire an exterminator to do a Borate foam in your walls too, if you're so inclined.

[eyelikerancid]

This sounds worth looking into; I could squeeze into the crawlspace if I had to-- don't really want to, but it would be worth it if I could get rid of the roaches!

[reactoss]

Our house had quite a lot of cockroaches but owning four cats made light work of them, now we get one or two every now and then but they don't last long (majority were gone within a month or two). I would avoid pesticides if your cats are likely to hunt them but apart from that, I'm not sure what you can do other than let your cats deal with them.

[lintilla]

Yeah, I just let my cats eat the roaches when they get in. XD Of course, one of them is more apt just to play with them...

[reactoss]

Haha, one of ours tries to play with them, he plays soccer with them, kicks them down the hallway and chases after them. The game always ends when one of the other cats just walks over and eats it mid-game.

[lintilla]

Same with ours! It's hilarious.

[felix_felicis]

i feel your pain- we have an apartment in texas. it doesn't matter how often i clean or leave out bait for those buggers, they always come back. :( hope you get rid of them.

[i_luv_hipp0s]

check out diatomaceous earth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatomaceous_earth#Pest_control

[angelworks]

Ditto the ditto on DE. I use it to keep my pups worm free as well.

[eyelikerancid]

wow, that sounds perfect! I think I will go buy some today. Thank you!

[booboopenquin]

I recommend this as well. I purchased food-grade quality so I could use it around the pets with zero concerns.