How To Prevent Carpenter Ants

Having carpenter ants at home is clearly a problem that no homeowner would like to have. So, rather than waiting for the problem to occur and then try to fix it later which may be quite messy, you should instead look into the area of preventive actions: how to prevent carpenter ants from invading your home and cause damages to it.

Drawing up a list of preventive actions is useless unless you know what is carpenter ant and what it is all about, including things like its nature, habit and how they damage your home. To put it simple, you understand what are the possible risks, objects or things in your house that will attract the carpenter ants and try to minimize them. So, be prepared that a lot of these preventive works will involve visual inspection of your home, the surrounding and also their maintenance.

As we mentioned above, understanding carpenter ants will help you in the long run and if you have read one of the earlier article, you will know that carpenter ants are more likely to seek out moist and damp wood. Most of the pointers given below and based on that fact, so, check them out and carry out your necessary preventive actions.

• Removed any moist, soft or rotting wood, log stumps and waste wood. Carpenter ants are attracted to moist, soft or rotting wood (do we need to repeat that?). So, one of your top priority is to check out for plumbing leaks, overflowing gutters, leaky chimney flashing, roof edges, attics, door, windows frames and many others that may appear to be a possible nesting area for the carpenter ants.

• Trim trees and bushes that touch your home roofing and siding. By doing so, besides preventing possible damage to the walls and roof, you are also reducing the moisture problem and possibility of carpenter ants nesting in dead branches that may fall into the roof and subsequently invading into your house.

• Try to minimize any possible wood-to-soil contact, for example, landscape timbers, decking or fencing. If it is unavoidable, use the correct type of pressure treated timber to reduce the risk.

• Examine and repair any cracks to the foundations as it will be easily used by carpenter ants or even termites for access.

• Ensure that all openings where pipes and wires enter the house are tightly sealed and if there is any plumbing or outdoor water taps leak, repair them without delay.

• Storing firewood on the ground or stack against the sides of the home is a big NO. Never do that. Stack them up off the ground with a non-organic material beneath them. Also, ensure that you have examine the firewood (check for possible carpenter ants) before bringing them inside your house

• Check that there are no dead, rotting or poor health trees nearby your house. If there is, contact relevant authority to move them as soon as possible as carpenter ants simply loved this kind of environment.

These are a few simple things that you can do to prevent possible invading of carpenter ants and there are definitely many more. The key points is to up keep the maintenance of your property and surrounding to reduce any possible risk

Prevention of carpenter ants is not a one off type of work, it is always on going. Regular inspection and check and maintaining a clean and well ventilated environment will be very helpful in the long run of fighting and preventing carpenter ants.