How to Get Rid of Carpenter Ants
Carpenter Ants can be a nuisance to your home, they can cause damage to your home such as making your walls hollow. Fortunately, carpenter ants can be rid of. It isn’t great to see them foraging for food or water as not only are they destroying your home but are making a mess when they carry their picked up resources to the queen of their colony.
If the infestation is too big to handle or you don’t wanna take any chances, it’s better to call an ant exterminator or pest control. But in some cases, it’s still achievable to get rid of carpenter ants without calling for an ant exterminator or pest control. You’ll have to start from learning how to identify these carpenter ants before you learn how to remove them though. Below are information you can use in your way to getting rid of carpenter ants.
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CARPENTER ANTS IDENTIFICATION
CARPENTER ANTS DAMAGE
WHAT CAUSES CARPENTER ANTS IN THE HOUSE
SIGNS OF CARPENTER ANTS IN THE HOUSE
HOW TO FIND CARPENTER ANT NEST
IS CARPENTER ANT DAMAGE COVERED BY HOMEOWNERS INSURANCE
REMOVING CARPENTER ANTS NATURALLY
REMOVING CARPENTER ANTS WITH CHEMICALS
HOW TO PREVENT CARPENTER ANTS NATURALLY FROM COMING BACK
CARPENTER ANTS IDENTIFICATION
There is not just one sort of ant, there are plenty and definitely there are those which can infest your home and cause structural damage. Carpenter ants are one of those ants. Their length varies from 3-13mm and if they’re winged they could be in 20-25mm long, but it’s pretty hard to identify them just based on the size as their length varies for each one.
The color of these carpenter ants go from the common black and to shades of red to yellow. The carpenter ants distinctive feature would be the segment in their bodies that look like a notch, it’s located between the thorax and abdomen of the ant, its shape being fairly smooth and rounded. To make sure that you’re looking at a carpenter ant, it would be better to look at the ants closely or maybe just get a magnifying glass.
CARPENTER ANTS DAMAGE
Carpenter ants deals with damage close to their name. A carpenter works closely with wood, either developing something through it or repairing them. Carpenter ants do the same thing, they work very closely with wood but rather than making wood better, these ants do the opposite, they destroy the wood.
These woods that they destroy could be parts of your home structure, trees, or constructions materials. Not only do they cause damage, they also make you spend money seeing as you have to repair or replace what they’ve destroyed especially if it’s something your living on or are used for your building projects.
WHAT CAUSES CARPENTER ANTS IN THE HOUSE
Ignorance isn’t exactly a good thing, especially if it involves your house. Although you may not have carpenter ants yet and it would be best if you knew the reason behind why the carpenter ants could possibly come into your house, that is, if they haven’t already.
Carpenter Ants can basically enter into any home they want, especially if there is wood, whether it may be wet, damaged, or not, they can build their own path in these wood. They’re either simply looking for food at your home or found a spot in your house that they find perfect for building a nest and therefore had stayed in your house.
SIGNS OF CARPENTER ANTS IN THE HOUSE
There are plenty of different kinds of ants, and one of them is definitely a carpenter ant. If you’re thinking how you’d know if these ants are present in your home then take a look and read these signs.
Look at the wood based items in your home, if you look underneath these items or maybe even beside it there should be wood particles. This could be a sign that your being infested by carpenter ants. Other signs to confirm that you have carpenter ants would be the sounds inside walls, doors, windows, or any object that is made of wood. It could mean that carpenter ants are already working inside your home.
Those signs might need you to be more attentive to your surroundings but there are also obvious signs such as seeing an ant trail that goes from your home to the outside or seeing larger ants than usual with the color black or any shade between red and yellow. You may also see wings around your home as carpenter ants can also be swarmer ants which means they could have wings.
HOW TO FIND CARPENTER ANT NEST
In finding a carpenter ant nest, you should first identify which type of nest could you possibly have. The two types of the nests would be the satellite colonies which are usually hiding inside your house but can also be near outside, and the parent colonies is the colony in which they are in the outdoors and can be found in any tree that can be rotting, have been cut or anything that is basically wood, they also seem to be inside places that have moist wood such as the inside of a building. A satellite colony is basically an expansion of a parent colony that has a distance between them.
Now that you’ve learned that about these types, you can first check outside and look if there are any wood near you, any form of wood at all and if there are ants trailing on them. You could then find the possible parent colony or you could look inside your house first and search for trails of ants going outside or squeezing their way in inside cracks and wooden holes. A method that you can try if you’re inside your home is knocking on the walls, if there is a hollow sound to it then it would most likely have been damaged by carpenter ants and if a way out for the ants is near enough from where you knocked, it’s likely for them to come out due to the sudden distress of you knocking at their home.
IS CARPENTER ANT DAMAGE COVERED BY HOMEOWNERS INSURANCE
Homeowners insurance could be great, it can offer you the help you need when you experience a bad event such as tornadoes, fires, and the like. That’s great! But there are a list of exceptions that the homeowner insurance does not cover, sadly, a carpenter ant damage is one of them.
Homeowners insurance does not cover damage done by insects or rodents. The problem with insects or rodents reflect on the homeowner and how they maintain their houses, these infestations are regarded rather as in issue of home maintenance.
REMOVING CARPENTER ANTS NATURALLY
If you’ve spotted the infestation early enough, you can get rid of them yourself without having to calling for pest control. In removing carpenter ants, there are natural remedies available for you to try.
One way to go is by using Food Grade Diatomaceous Earth (DE), one that is not used for a pool of course. This is an organic insect killer that you could use inside your home, these carpenter ants will not be able to digest this kind of dust and therefore cause dehydration and destroy their exoskeleton. Just sprinkle it around the house where the ants usually make their way. An additional feature for the DE is that it’s also safe for both humans and pet animals.
Another natural remedy would be essential oils, essential oils are one of the most common way to get rid of ants naturally and that includes carpenter ants. This is because through the use of essential oils, it’s smell is not only disliked by the ants but it also disrupts their trails. All you have to do is get a cotton ball or any small cloth and dab essential oil on it, rub it to any possible entrances of the carpenter ants so that they wouldn’t make their way in your home anymore. With essential oil, it is also possible to create a carpenter ant killing spray, get a spray bottle and put a fair amount of water and around 12-15 drops of the essential oil. Shake it and then Spray. If you’re looking for something that is both organic and ready for your use, you could buy a premade spray, an ant bait, a killer dust, and the like which are made with natural ingredients.
REMOVING CARPENTER ANTS WITH CHEMICALS
When you hear the word chemicals, you immediately link it with the word “toxic”. Albeit in some cases true, there are also chemicals which are nontoxic. In removing carpenter ants, both toxic and nontoxic chemicals are available. You can create a choice in how you remove carpenter ants and using chemicals could definitely be one.
Creating a homemade bait for the carpenter ants is easy, all you need is boric acid mixed with sugar water, you may then put this on a food that could bait the ants. It’s better to set this bait where carpenter ants gather or forage their food. By using this homemade bait, the carpenter ants will move forward to it by themselves and the boric acid will be the poison that kills them. Seeing boric acid as a dangerous poison, instead of having baits that your pets could eat. By putting only boric acid mixed with sugar water in a spray bottle, you can scatter it on the same places as you would if you used the bait. Just be sure not to spray any electrical circuits or open wires.
There are also pesticides that you can count on when removing carpenter ants, pesticides such as Pyrethroid and Desiccants. Pyrethroids are pesticides that ants may ingest, it’s also non toxic to animals and humans but if inhaled or has somewhat touched your skin then it may cause respiratory or skin irritation. Desiccants is another pesticide that you may use, it’s also non toxic but like Pyrethroid pesticides, it can cause irritation to the skin and respiratory system. This pesticide is also typically ingested by ants and works first by breaking the ant’s outer coating.
HOW TO PREVENT CARPENTER ANTS NATURALLY FROM COMING BACK
You’ve finally removed the carpenter ants anywhere near your home or even inside of it, that’s great, but you can’t rest easy or else they might come back. To prevent these carpenter ants from coming back, here are some pieces of advice.
Carpenter Ants definitely love wood, not as their meal but as their home, they’re still definitely attracted to it though. Clean up the wood around your house and make sure that there are no entrance points for these ants, all the small holes and cracks should be closed. Ants can’t live on just wood though, they also forage for food so make sure to clean up well and food bits that could be lying around your house.
As for the ants coming from outside, it’s best if you put your wooden piles away from your home, put some distance. Trees around your house should also be trimmed, don’t let it touch your house or else the carpenter ants living from there might just live in yours once again.
Just remember, it’s always best to keep your house clean from all the sweet substances and food particles because after all, which ant wouldn’t want it?
