Carpenter Ant Treatment That Works

hi this is guy now i've been doing pest control for many years now and i've been licensed in several states well i'm not licensed anymore because i'm retired now but given the fact that many people need to save money these days i decided that i would share ways that i learned over the years on how you can do your own pest control effectively safely and inexpensively now you should know that i am not making any money off these videos at least not yet youtube has not paid me anything and i do not receive any compensation from any companies that manufacture or sell pesticides and equipment nor do i receive any compensation from pest control companies that sell services for applying pesticides and getting rid of pests my only motivation for doing these videos is to try to help others so i hope that you'll take the time to you know pay it forward and share any knowledge that you may have and please if you know somebody a friend or family member that could also stand to save a buck on pest control and who is willing to do it themselves please click the share button and pass it along help somebody else now if you'd like to see some more of my videos then please click the subscribe button i'm going to be totally honest about this i do not do these videos as often as i'd like i i have to admit that i i've got a lot on my plate these days and but i'm going to promise you that i will try my best to do them just as quickly as i can okay if you are watching this video then presumably you have already watched my video on how to tell if you have termites or carpenter ants if you have not watched that video yet then i suggest that you do that prior to watching this video and i will put a link in the the description for you on how to get to that video now today i'm going to talk about treating carpenter ants so the first thing that you should know is that unlike termites carpenter ants do not eat wood termites eat wood but carpenter ants do not carpenter ants just tunnel through the wood and some of them don't even do that of course even if they're not busy crunching on your house you still kind of need to send them packing also personally i think they're kind of lazy i mean they don't seem to like to work too hard and that's why i think they prefer that soft wet wood rather than that nice hard dry wood so likely places to find them would be any place that is damp or wet like under sinks around bathtubs crawl spaces and so forth where maybe you have a leaky pipe or you have some water coming in from the from the outside or condensation or something like that now if you have competence then in a way it doesn't make much difference what kind of carpenter ant you have because they are all treated the same way but it does make a difference on the amount of damage that they may be doing to your home in most cases at least in the u.s you are probably going to encounter black carpenter ants and these are the guys that will damage your home but in some southern states you may also encounter florida caught into ants and as the name suggests we definitely have these guys in florida now florida carpenter ants can be distinguished from their black cousins because they have a reddish head in thorax while the black ones are well black and they're just totally black now florida carpenter ants are capable of tunneling through that soft wet wood that i told you about but they mostly just build colonies in the wall voids you know also in soffits uh around poorly you know poorly sealed windows you know any places in your home with it where there's like a space that they can get into that they can use that to colonize and they could go undetected for a while because of that so if you have this type of clock to end they're kind of more of a nuisance rather than a serious cause of concern because there's a good chance they are not eating i'm sorry not eating but they're not tunneling through your wood because carbon dance do not eat the wood they just tunnel through it in any event you are going to want to eradicate these things just as quickly as you can now if you have the black ones then this is a bit more concerning because they like to colonize in that nice wet soft wood and they are going to do some damage okay before i tell you how to get rid of these things let's talk for a minute on how do you know if you even have them well unlike termites carpenter ants are fairly easy to discover since unlike termites they do not eat wood they come out at night to forage for food and you will often see dead bodies lying around near the walls also in the case of black carpenter ants you'll often notice something we call frass coming out of the wooden parts of your home like the floor joists joists roof rafters you know that sort of thing any place where there's exposed wood and now this frass looks a bit like sawdust and it's comprised of wood shavings and excrement that the ants removed from the wood and one of the telltale signs is you're going to see these little tiny holes in the wood where the ants are pushing out the frass now you should note that just because you see these little holes and you see the frass does not mean that you have coffin ants you may also have dry wood termites now dry wood termites typically are just found in southern coastal states so take a look at this map i drew if you live outside of the red area then you most likely have carpenter ants but if you live inside the ready area then you really need to obtain a specimen to make a proper identification to make sure you know exactly what you're dealing with again in the case of carpenter ants you will mostly like most likely find specimens that are you know dead ants that are near the wall okay finally are you ready for this it in the case of carpet to ants it's possible to actually hear them and it may sound something like this [Music] now let's face it unless your home's haunted your walls don't normally make rustling sounds so you know that something is in there that doesn't belong there okay now that you know that you do have carpenter ants let's talk about how to get rid of them which i suppose is the main reason that you're watching this video so let's get to it the first thing you should understand is that these things got in from the outside so you must treat the exterior of the building to prevent them from reinfesting the home but we're going to talk about that in just a minute the next thing you should know is that treating carpet to ants costs money not as much as hiring a pro but you do need to buy the right products and equipment now treating carpet to ants requires that you treat both the inside and the outside of your home now i never like treating the inside of a home unless it's absolutely necessary but in the case of carpenter ants it's absolutely necessary so let's start there for treating the inside of your home i like to use a combination of baits dust and foam for interior equipment you're going to need a small duster like this one these are available from do my own.com or amazon i think for about fourteen dollars this will of course be used to apply the dust there are several good dusts on the market but the one i like is defense delta methane dust it's available from do my own dot com or amazon i think for about fifteen 15 now be careful not to overfill the duster you only want to fill it about halfway personally i like to be thorough so i remove all the outlet covers throughout the entire house and i give it a couple of shots with the duster between the the outlet box and the drywall and you know just give a couple shots right in there on every single outlet and if there's any carbon dance traveling in the walls that that should pretty much get rid of them now if you hear activity in a wall i would actually drill a small hole right through the drywall and apply several shots of the dust right above where you hear the noise and just let it drop down to the colony now i know this is going to require that you repair the drywall but believe me filling in a small hole in the wall definitely beats ripping down the drywall to replace the studs that were destroyed by the carpenter ants next you're going to need to treat the pipes under the sinks under appliances any place you find cracks large enough to basically stick in the duster tip next you're gonna want to use a good bait i like to use both a sweet bait and a protein bait at the same time because ants seem to be fussy some ants prefer sweet bait and some prefer protein bait most of the time they prefer the sweet bait but i use the protein bait just to be sure max force carpenter ant bait gel is a good choice for a sweet bait and advanced carpenter carpenter ant bait is a pretty good choice for the protein bait there are others on the market i'm sure that are probably fine but these just happen to be the ones that i use and so far for me they've done a pretty good job now both can be purchased from do my own dot com the max force carpenter ant gel costs about thirty dollars for four tubes and the advanced carbon damp bait cost about about twenty six dollars for an eight ounce bottle i'm thinking uh and that should be plenty to get the job done for your house just place the bait wherever you notice carpenter ant activity or you suspect there might be carpenter ants under sinks under toilets around baseboards bathtubs that sort of thing also you're going to want to put it under appliances and around appliances as well basically anywhere you think there might be ant activity if you are concerned about you know kids or pets getting into the bait you know just use bait stations and they're also available from do my own.com and i think you can get like you know 48 of them for about 26 and um that should should do the job well for you but i can tell you that in my experience like kids and pets generally do not bother the pet the debate so personally i've never had to use bait stations but i can tell you that it is somewhat neater and you know keeps you from sweeping up or vacuuming up that granular bait when you're cleaning the other thing you can do is kind of put that granular bait in like you know a little cap that you might get off a medicine bottle or something like that and that kind of keep it neat okay now it's time to follow up with the termidor foam i don't happen to have any of that left because remember i'm not the business anymore i'm uh i'm just a homeowner like you and i don't have any coffee and so i don't have any of the phone so let me borrow some video from another company you know pest i think they're called get this right solutions pest and lawn i think they're called my memory is not as good as it was folks uh i think these folks also sell pest products online but i haven't used them yet i'll have to check them out at some point and see what their prices are like but they did a pretty decent video on this but you know not quite as thorough as mine but i do like some of the video that they they have so let me let me just steal a little bit of a bit of it from them i hope they don't mind anyway you want to treat around the windows doors plumbing under sinks and any holes in the wood where carpenter ants may be present now if you hear any activity in your walls you can also drill a hole in the wall where you hear the noise and inject the foam directly into the colony okay now that you've treated the interior of your house it's time to treat the exterior it's very important to treat the exterior of your home every six months for the good to my decide such as taurus sc this product can be used every six months at a dilution rate of point eight ounces per gallon of water now taurus sc is also available from do my own or amazon i also do an in-between treatment with tal star p that is to say i first treat with taurus sc and then three months later i treat with tal star p then three months after that i treat with the taurus sc again and then three months after that i treat with the tal star p and and so on tal star p is labeled for use every three months while the taurus sc is labeled just for every six months so that's why i say you can alternate between products and still be legal now uh again taurus sc and telstra p are both available from do my own and amazon uh and taurus sc cost about 95 dollars for 78 ounces i think and tal star p cost about 65 for a gallon now that sounds like a lot of money but it generally only takes about 12 to 20 gallons to treat the average home most of the time it's closer to the 12 gallons than the 20. so in the case of taurus sc you get 78 ounces for 95 dollars and since you were mixing it 0.8 ounces per gallon that container makes about 97 gallons of finished product which means you can treat your home about five to eight times since you're only using it twice a year this 78 ounce container will last between two and four years so that's only going to cost you between 24 to 48 dollars a year the tal star p ah costs 65 a gallon and it makes uh 128 gallons of finished product again it takes about 12 to 20 gallons to do the average size house so a gallon lasts between uh six to 2 to 11 applications since you are only treating with this also twice a year that means this container will last between three to six years and it will only cost you between eleven dollars to twenty one dollars a year so if you alternate between these products every three months it will only cost you between 35 and and 69 a year and believe me that's a lot cheaper than the 300 a year that a professional is going to charge you to do the same thing and believe me when i tell you the treatment that you are going to do based on these videos is going to catch areas that the pros generally miss so in other words doing it this way you're going to do a better job and catch more pests than the pros do additionally this treatment will not only keep out carpet ants but also every other type of bug you can imagine including other types of ants spiders cockroaches etc and it will stop wasps from building nests in your eaves it'll even prevent subterranean termites to some extent but i do also recommend treating for termites with the products that i recommend in my termite treatment video which is the bio advanced termite killer and you should really be doing that annually as well and that can be done for under fifty dollars a year and i'll put a link to that video in the description okay tell you what let's go outside and i'm going to show you how to treat the exterior of your home okay folks i put two gallons of water in the sprayer just a quick tip when you're mixing the pesticide always put the pesticide in the sprayer before you put the water in that way you don't have to pick it up and shake it if you kind of just put the pesticide in first and you know shoot the hose in on top of the pesticide it kind of does a good job mixing it because lifting these things up and shaking them again for me is kind of a hard thing to do if you're one of those young guys that have lots of muscles and it's no problem okay so assuming we've mixed our pesticide according to label directions let me show you how to apply it okay what you want to do is set your tip so it makes a nice fan spray and if you see that again this is just water and what you want to do is make sure you get around all your windows like that okay pretty simple and then what you're going to want to do is around the entire house you want to catch about two feet up and about two feet out from the house i need to think i need to readjust the camera to get that just hang on a second treating the side of the house pretty simple it's pretty fast just treat up i did a little bit more than two feet but that's about all you need now with the mistake a lot of people make is they just do a quick spray on the ground and that's not enough you have to understand a lot of times these these uh insects no matter what you're treating for aren't traveling on top of the ground if you look on top of the ground you're probably not seeing anything and that's because oftentimes they are below the ground a little bit and so you really want to soak it particularly i have gravel here and treating the top of the gravel isn't going to get much done so what you want to do is really soak in the gravel and right where the wall meets the ground or the gravel in this case you want to soak that in really good because i'll tell you a lot of insects like to live right in here and that's no different with carpet to ants so this is where you're going to find a lot of them so make sure you flood this in really good and it's not only going to stop carpet to ants this treatment is going to stop pretty much anything that is going to enter your house so if you've got gravel like me soak it really good if you just have concrete up to the house just a little bit will do if you have dirt give it a pretty good soak if you see it really wet on the top then that's good enough but you don't want that little bit of a just spritz you want to soak it pretty good and if you have a sidewalk that's meeting the gravel like i do you want to soak that in here as well okay it's pretty simple the reason most pest treatments don't work for amateurs is because they don't use enough pesticide treating an average house like i have you're going to easily use 12 to 20 gallons of pesticide just what it takes okay all right let me show you how to do some other treatments like the eaves now if you have a gabled roof like i do you need to set up a ladder to catch it and i recommend that you keep the ladder oh maybe a couple of feet away from the building because it's going to drip and you don't want it dripping on top of you so be safe also work away from you and just keep moving the ladder i'll show you that in just a second all right this is pretty simple i generally leave the eaves to last and i usually don't put more than a gallon of pesticide inside the sprayer so that i can easily carry it again what you want to do is start from the top work down and don't spray as far as your ladder is because you don't want this stuff dripping on top of you so pretty simple that much catch the side if you have something like this any penetrations and that's it then just move the ladder and treat further down pretty fast easy and simple to do now if you have any penetrations like this we have a little hole here with this wire goes in this is a dead outlet by the way it was here when i got here it was installed incorrectly so it's disconnected we don't use it but it's still got a hole which i should really seal up but make sure you shoot some pesticide in and around it make sure you catch any holes that's the same thing anywhere around the building any holes penetrations anything like that make sure you get some pesticide into it you want to make sure you catch your doors so pretty simple just make sure you get this out of the way sure you catch the bottom of the door and then right around simple as that then again around if you have these concrete areas make sure that you treat two feet up and then catch the concrete also around the door if you have bushes or any type of ornamental plants or anything that around your home make sure you treat the root structures of it pretty well and just really soak it in and then also treat the actual plants themselves so anything that wants to crawl on there is going to be dead if you have trees next to your house go up about two feet up the side of the tree all the way around and again treat the soil around the tree and make sure you soak it pretty well and that will prevent any carpet ants from infesting the tree as well now carpet to ants love wood and so same thing with termites and other bugs as well for that matter so when if you have a fence that butts the house like this you want to make sure you treat that at least this far you know a couple of feet out on the fence any any penetrations we have and do that on both sides of the fence make sure you soak it pretty good because you don't want the copper dance it's a perfect place for them to cross over and get on your house and again make sure that you you can't see it because of the air conditioning unit but get down low and treat it all the way up and down the fence okay and then you want to treat the soil that is that the fence meets on the ground as well and again right around the entire house okay and of course don't forget your garage too not just for carpenter ants but for any pests that might want to enter your house wouldn't hurt to treat right around just like you would the windows and doors and catch where the garage door meets the ground i don't know if you see but there's a piece of wood they left in here when they poured the concrete so so that that is temptation for termites and carpenter ants right there so i soak it right in and again around the building two feet up and next to where the concrete meets and all the gravel and it wouldn't hurt if you have joints in the concrete to just catch them as well not just for uh so much for carpenter ants that's not so much problem but for any type of pest that you have any cracks that you have in your concrete would be a good time good idea to treat them while you're here just to get rid of any type of pests that you may have that's about it folks the only other thing i can mention is always take good care of your equipment don't leave unused pesticide inside the sprayer it sometimes can get like clumpy and congeal and ruin a perfectly good sprayer so what i always do and safety first is always make sure you remove the cap dump out the remaining pesticide if there is any sometimes it it won't all be get picked up when you're spraying so any excess just dump it out and then be sure to put about half a gallon of water in it and then just put the cap on not too heavy with a half gallon of water and just shake it up don't run any unused pesticide and then you want to make sure there's nothing in the hose so now that you got clean water just put a little in the sprayer and go ahead and turn it on to get rid of any pesticide that may be inside the hose dump it out [Music] and you're good to go just one last thing make sure you turn off the sprayer i make that mistake all the time get an abs in mind i forget to turn the sprayer off and i find it running inside the garage so not a good thing if there's no water and it could burn out the motor that's it uh let me get back inside and wrap this thing up okay that's it for me today i'm sorry that this took so long but believe me i cannot show you how to do a proper treatment for carpet to ants in five minutes i know people love their their youtube video short but if you want to do an effective job you just need to take the time to learn how to do it right anyway if you found this video to be of any assistance to you whatsoever then please share it with a friend or a family member who also needs to save some money on pest control and if you would like to see more of my videos please click the subscribe button okay until next time folks thank you so much for watching and please do not hesitate to ask questions i'm always here to help

Channel: Guy's Pest Solutions

Views: 89,267

Keywords: pest, pest control, termites, drywood termites, subterranean termites, drywood, subterranean, insects, bugs, Guy, Guy's, diy, do it yourself, carpenter ants, ants, carpenter, treatment, pest treatment, save money, kill, terminate, pests, inexpensive pest control, cheap, cheap pest control

Id: Te9BUCaIQZY

Length: 33min 15sec (1995 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 02 2021