Posted on general board (didn't know this board was here), but carried forward to here.

Just bought my first home, and as such am learning new things everyday about all that goes into the process. Recently, I've been getting hit up quite a bit from pest control companies, all of whom are selling one time initial treatments which are a "deep clean" (for lack of a better term), followed up by quarterly services which maintain.

I was pretty shocked by this, especially the cost and the need, in their opinion, to service on a quarterly basis. I had always assumed that you call them if you start seeing a lot of bugs, they service, and then you're good until the next time (but certainly not quarterly).

I assume these companies have all gotten smart and know that the quarterly model is the most profitable avenue for them, however this just seems absurd. How do the other homeowners here approach their pest control issues? I assume most just call someone as needed, however I'm curious.

I'm interested in responses and can tell you what I'm doing. I've been doing it myself for several years but have hit a huge snag recently. I do granular poison about every couple of months (Spectracide from HD) on my whole yard, do the hose-attach sprays probably every other week on the backyard, and then do a product from doyourownpestcontrol.com around the foundation and inside.

But in the last weeks my little dog has come up wtih lots of fleas twice. Do idea what else I can even put out to help control it. So I'm looking at hiring a professional company to take over since I'm obviously missing something.

In general, most of the treatments are going to last 45-60 days. You won't see a ton of activity until 60-90 days, but pest control isn't a once per year deal. Any chemicals that would have that sort of residual effects are going to be in concentrations that aren't safe. If you want to do it yourself, it is relatively simple- the main thing to know is where exactly to spray to get the best control. Domyownpestcontrol.com is a very informative resource to start with.

For your fleas and ticks, you have to target them where they live and breed, which is in your grass. You need not only a good adulticide (synthetic pyrethrins are the most common), but you also need to apply a larvacide to stop the life cycle immediately. Pyriproxyfen is the one we use most- I own a Mosquito Joe franchise- but any residual larvicide that can be applied to the breeding areas will work. If you only use the adulticide, the eggs that have already been laid will still hatch and your problems won't subside until you treat multiple times over the course of 2 or 3 weeks. You still might have to make a 2nd treatment about 10 days after the first, but you should see a noticeable difference quicker if you eliminate both sides of the life cycle.

Doing myself sounds interesting. Here are the prices I'm being quoted:

Home Team:

House is new construction, and so there was a pre-installed system that runs through the walls and which they inject some sort of pesticide into in order to do their servicing. For $250, they have two separate services which includes them injecting their death poison, spraying around the house, and doing a bunch of other pest services. After than $100 each quarter. So $650 in the first year for pest service. That seems insane.

Aptive:

18 year old kid comes to my door last night at 9 pm (luckily I'm not an old so didn't care, but told him he should probably rethink that strategy moving forward). Claims they do similar service as Home Team, however they obviously can't inject anything. Will do the initial service for $9 (claims he needs one last spot to fill and wants to cut me a deal) then $90 for each quarterly service. He dropped the price three different times as I kept informing him I wasn't planning on doing any pest services right now since I hadn't really noticed any. Obviously far cheaper, however I'm immediately skeptical of a business who has to push their product that hard and undercuts their initial sales price that much.

What's your take on those prices?

Spray cypher wp (generic Demon) along the foundation, weep holes & soffits once a month ~$10/month

During the spring/summer spray Bifen I/T every month to the entire yard with the sprayer that attaches to the water hose. No fire ants, no mosquitos, no nothing. ~$10-15/month

I use Mr Jon Man from here.....

I've used Berrett Pest Control for years in Oklahoma (named A+ there) and in Denver. They are in the major cities in Texas as well. It's like $99/quarter and they do an initial inside and out treatment and then outside. If you do have some bugs get inside in between the quarters they will come out for free and treat. Always been happy with them. If you check them out and go with them, shoot me an email at username at gmail and I can refer you and I think we both get a credit.

I think I'm going to go the "do it yourself" route, at least initially, as it seems like I can save quite a bit of money.

Call mr. Jon man. Or a semi small or small company. Aptive is basically alterra who sold,out to terminix and started another company the next day. The $9 initial locks you into a very one sided contract. Benefits of 4x a year service usually include warraties on all work, which can save you money in the long run for things like fleas. Plus may help with mosquitoes and a variety of other pests. All depends on the situation . Regular service far outweighs as needed service, pest control is pretty temperory as it is.

I'm new to this side of the board, who is Mr. Jon Man?

Lone Star Pest in Houston. I also use them...and you get a discount when mentioning Texags/ A&M.

Ahhh gotcha. I live in Dallas. Either way, I think I'm gonna take Ag0207's advice and purchased the pesticide he referenced, along with a 2 gallon sprayer. Figure I'll give it a try, feel good about doing something myself instead of paying a premium to somebody else, and save some money in the process. Thanks for the help to all.

We have used home team for years with no problems, ever. We switched for about 6 months to a year, but we started seeing more bugs, so we switched back. I hate paying that bill every quarter though, so i know where your coming from. I have thought about the do it yourself route, but never pursued it.

Here's my experience with DIY pest control:

I just learned a hard lesson. Don't spray Demon WP if you may already have ants in your house.

Wife and I saw a few sugar ants coming through a gap in the door and we had acrobat ants on our patio. I went the self application rout with Demon WP around the perimeter of the house at ground level and in most of the weep holes. I was also "fortunate" enough to notice Carpenter ants going in and out of a tiny hole in the mortar of one of our front columns. Flooded that hole with spray and it was a mass exodus of dying ants fleeing the column.

The next day or so, we noticed a couple of Carpenter ants in the bedroom. No problem, the Demon will get them, right? We are still seeing them now.

Sunday evening we noticed winged ants in our daughter's room and decided to get ABC out today in case they were actually termites (they weren't termites, actually they were winged acrobat ants).

The ABC rep (nice older lady) told me
What I did with the Demon was actually create a barrier that the ants won't go past. Thus, they are going through the house looking for a way around the Demon. We've never had a problem with ants before and the only variable that changed was me mucking around with the Demon.

Long story short, my experience is that it's probably better to pay for a year of extermination service and then DIY, rather than make the same mistake I did.

Why didn't you spray your baseboards? No more inside bugs.

I just bought a new house in Midlothian, Tx. I didn't plan on using a pest control service but soon learned that the fire ants are out of control in my area. We ended up signing up with Sureguard out of Mansfield. They have a quarterly service but will also come any time between their scheduled visits if you have any unexpected 'infestations.' I have already called them for an extra application to get the fire ants about 50 days after their first application. The follow up visits are covered under my service contract so I do not pay any extra for those visits. I pay under $25/month for this service. In my opinion this is worth it to me. I don't have to worry about it...and at this point in my life I can afford to pay $25/month for this.

Just moved into new construction and have had several companies come by the house and push their services. Our house was built with the Home Team spots so that they could spray between the walls and brick but a different company came by first and my wife went with them.

Since there is so much construction going on out near us and since it's kind of country (we live in Northlake/Argyle near Fort Worth) we are seeing lots of bugs and especially spiders getting away from the construction and moving into our yard. I find the pest services very beneficial just because of the large volume and because I don't trust myself enough to make sure I got every nook and cranny with the DIY. We are on a quarterly deal and one year contract. If we every see a large amount of insects/spiders, then we can call them up and they will come spray free of charge, so that alleviates some of the quarterly bill burden.



And now to White Knight Pest Services. I cannot stress enough that you do not do business with them. They came by last weekend and tried to push their services on my wife who answered the door. Asked her if we are satisfied with our current company and what our prices were. My wife said we were very satisfied and showed him our contract. He took a picture and said he would try to beat their prices and come back to us. Flash forward 3 hours and our current pest control company sends us a bill for cancellation and rest of the contract. We give them a call and turns out the White Knight guy called our current company and said he was me and that I was "very dissatisfied with our services" and that we wanted to cancel. Needless to say I called White Knight and cussed out the president and owner and threatened to have the kid arrested for fraud/identity theft and filed a complaint with the BBB. Our current company rescinded our cancellation and everything is fine now.

TLDR; White Knight salesmen fraudulently impersonated me in order to cancel our current contract with a different company. DO NOT USE WHITE KNIGHT PEST SERVICES!!!

Some good information in here. Thanks guys. I, too, am surprised by the comment about trapping the ants in. I would think that spraying the Demon inside of the house would have remedied this issue?

Either way, we only moved into the house about 30 days ago and so I'm hoping that I don't really have any infestations at this point. i already purchased some Demon and a nice 2 gallon sprayer, and so for the time being I'm going to give it a go with the DIY. If that fails, I will probably give Home Team a shot at my business.

Sounds good. Id love to hear how it goes for you.

I have gone the DIY route for 4 years now. I was lazy for a 3 month stretch & had ants move in. I sprayed the perimeter of my house with Demon. After a few days still had ants inside (they were cutoff from escaping) so I did a quick internet search and determined what type of ants they were. Bought a bait recommended from an online DIY website and a week later no more ants. Since then mo more problems as I keep up with spraying on a regular basis.

We had a company prior to me going the DIY route and they started out great but the longer we had them it seemed like they got a little lax as bugs started showing up. I switched and same thing happened. That's why I chose the DIY route and have been very happy.

FYI on the Demon: it will leave a slight white residue where you spray it (which hasn't been a problem for me), run some clean water through your sprayer when you are done to keep it from getting clogged & if you see a fire ant mound soak it demon and take a look at it 10-15 minutes later

We've used HomeTeam since we moved in. Never seen a roach inside or out. I dont't think Hometeam has ever actually been in our home. The guy has so many houses he is basicallly in our neighborhood all day everyday, so I see him often. Comes by promptly when little ants find their way in. Treated our yard with fipronil two weeks ago. Fire Ants have disappeared, supposedly for 12 months. Take care of wasps nest and mud daubers. Termite bait stations always handled.

Salespeople always try to tell me I'm paying too much. Don't care. I don't drop good service for low price. It might be expensive, but it is worth it.

AG0207:

For the white residue, any issues or concerns with stains on the baseboards or wood flooring? I imagine the answer would have to be no, as the reviews for Demon are pretty spectacular, however given it's a brand new home and the wood floors were a pretty expensive upgrade, want to make sure I'm not doing anything detrimental, whether in the short or long term.

Appreciate the recommendations from everyone....

Thread contains a lot of good info

Top Choice is what your yard was treated with....or the generic version. We use Top Choice, and it's legit. If done right, no fire ants for at least a year.

I have never sprayed demon inside. Never had to. I assume if you wiped the white residue off you would be wiping the product away. Demon keeps most if not all things out. If you need to spray inside I would defer recommendations to someone else. I have used ortho home defense inside with no issues but haven't needed it since switching to demon & bifin.

I guess I just don't understand why paying $320ish/yr for pest control is such a big deal. In the scheme of home maintenance it seems like a pretty small price to pay.

Anyone have any good companies in Austin

In DFW.

We originally used Hometeam because they have the monopoly on the in-wall distribution lines that our builder used. No issues with them except for the price.

My wife convinced me to drop service and we did so for a year or 2. Slowly we had more and more issues, and I didn't feel like messing with the various products in and around the property to kill or prevent pests.

A few years ago we went with Moxie. They're prices were significantly lower than Hometeam and they did more for the price (such as spraying the yard which HT wanted to up charge to do).

I have been a homeowner for almost 15 years now. First home for 10 years was new construction, current home is a 25 year old home.

My new construction home we had a few scorpions and then the occasional sugar ant problem. Had a swarm of termites one day that was kinda crazy, but other than that I would just go around the perimeter of the house with ant/insect poison and I never had any problems. I think we saw maybe 3-4 roaches in my 10 years there.

Current house - have seen a few more roaches, probably 2-3 per year and have not had an ant problem. I do the same thing around the perimeter of the house.

About the only "problem" I have is wasps. I have had a $50 treatment 2x in the 5 years I have been in this house.

We don't have pets, and hence no pet food which might attract different pests. That keeps some things away, which keeps the snakes away too. We have an owl in our backyard that is around for most of the spring which is awesome too.

We keep a very clean kitchen and don't allow food anywhere outside the kitchen, which I think is the key to being pest free.

$.02

http://www.domyownpestcontrol.com/ is a great site.

We spray our house with this stuff:
http://amzn.to/2aDx7DF

Use this sprayer:
http://amzn.to/2aDxiif

Keeps bugs out for 2+ months. Spray all the baseboards, the window sills, doorways, around all the pipes (under sinks, toilets, etc)

For all of you that spray your own house (I do this as well), how do you handle the attic, if at all?