Tried everything except ripping up kitchen counters etc…the spray seems to work better than the bombs, but the thing is, it is like they KNOW and the ones that DO survive go back and breed more just to screw with me…tried Boric Acid, worked for awhile, now they seem immune to it…HELP! We cannot afford to tear out our kitchen, but they are UNDER the floor it seems, behind the oven installed in the wall.pls ANY advice would be greatly appreciated!!! I am NOT a nasty person. Clean muliple times a day, all to NO avail.:smack:
Call a professional.
There comes a time where OTC homeowner remedies just aren’t good enough. Call a professional and have them come back every few months until the problem is solved.
Are you in a house or apartment/condo? It’s easier if it’s a house. If it’s an apartment/condo and the source is someone else’s unit, I’m afraid even a professional isn’t going to be able to eliminate the problem completely, without fumigating the entire building.
House, we maybe brought one with us when we moved in 3 yrs ago…we were in a duplex and the neighbors had um. At that time we were renting and the landlord had a pro come in and spray every month, did NOTHING…I am afraid that is what we are going to have to do…do the tarp/fumagate thing. And HOW much does THAT cost??
I got rid of them with duct tape. I moved into an old house. My packing boxes were sealed with duct tape. I opened a few and crashed for the night. In the morning, the exposed duck tape was full of cockroaches. That night I put down 30- 6 inch strips of duct tape all around the house. In the morning I counted over 150 cockroaches trapped on the duct tape. Did this for a few nights, until there were none. Apparently the glue on the duct tape attracted them, and they became stuck. This was in Utah 25 years ago.
Moving to the present, I tried this in Mexico. It didn’t work. I don’t know if the formula of glue was different, or the Mexican cockroaches didn’t go for it. Give it a try. It is cheap, and no chemicals. Let me know if it works.
thanks much! Willl try…we have caulked most crevices, helps somewhat…
What are the roaches eating?
I lived in Northern California most of my life and never really dealt with roaches.
Then I moved to Tucson, Arizona in my early 20’s and encountered them for the first time. I was practicing Buddhism and at first thought I could live with them and not kill them.
Then one night I was awakened by one skittering across my chest as I slept.
Boric acid mixed with powdered sugar.
Leave it out where they can get it.
Hell if I know, I keep my counters and floors clean.They are amazing. You can step on one and think it is dead and the minute they think you are gone they get back up and start on their way again. OBVIOUSLY I cannot get EVERY SINGLE CRUMB…but believe me, I do NOT want these creatures and stay up many nites, all nite, cleaning and spraying and killing them…they seem to enjoy my wood furniture the most…
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=15555577&postcount=27
Link leads to the easy, safe, and inexpensive method I used. It’s been a few years now, but I haven’t heard of any strains gaining resistance to these chemicals yet. . .
Storyteller Bailey White once told of a relative of hers who hired an organic pest control company. She had to let them go, because all the stomping was driving her crazy.
I had an apartment in Japan with many cockroaches. After a couple of years of battle which got me nowhere, one night I came home and saw a mouse in my apartment. When the mouse saw me it ran into a corner and disappeared seemingly into nowhere. I got down and investigated closely with a flashlight and found a small hole in the concrete foundation. I plugged the hole with a bit of aluminum foil and that did it. I never saw a cockroach in the apartment again.
The problem is finding the hole(s) they are using to get in. If I could have caught that mouse after the fact, it would have been free cheese and peanut butter for the rest of his (her) life!
Can you have pets? Most cats will make short work of their new toys.
Water is often a bigger attractor than food. Do you have any puddles or pools? Finding and eliminating water will help, as will plugging whatever hole they are using (and there is one somewhere) with steel wool.
Or your house had them when you got there.
Diatamaceous earth Just a thought. Seems to have the same effect as boric acid.
I’ve never had a bug problem, but I have a friend that had to deal with bed bugs. They got in her luggage at a hotel. She brought in the pros. It took four visits, and she had to throw out a lot of stuff.
What do you do with a lot of roaches? [George Carlin]Smoke em if ya got em [/GC]
sorry… I’m sure it sucks.
I lived in a townhouse unit many years ago. It was 4 units squared up against each other. If one unit was fogged they just moved on to the next.
What ended up working was something called “birth control for roaches”. What didn’t outright kill them caused them major birth defects. After the initial death toll hundreds were born as mutants. It was really kind of horrid, straight out of a sci-fi. Born with no legs, spontaneously aborted, half born egg casings!
But it worked…
+1
You want a combination of a killer and an IGR (Insect Growth Regulator). NyGuard is another brand of IGR, it can be combined with Onslaught insecticide. The IGR will last months with a proper application, can be used around food and animals, and will interupt their lifecycle.
Re: enipla’s mention of diatomaceous earth and boric acid, boric acid is an effective poison, especially when mixed with a bit of sugar and cocoa powder. Great for ants, I don’t know about roaches.
Diatomaceous earth works differently. It’s the skeletal remains of prehistoric, very tiny creatures, and it’s very abrasive and drying. It gets into an insect’s leg joints, and it rapidly wears the joints out. So, the bugs lie there crying “oil can” like tiny Tin Men.:eek:
MaxForce. Because it is a gel, it can be applied in area which are hard for children and animals to reach (like the inside of cabinets, or under the sink, or under the fridge).
Good stuff. Kills roaches like a motherfuck.
ETA: Dupont Advion is an IGR. Also very effective.
Professionals can’t do anything you can’t do yourself with a bit of effort. There are three basic steps:
- Directly treat as many of the critters as you can as fast as you can.
That means lifting all their shelter like pictures on the wall, under free standing furniture and anywhere else they hide and and spraying them directly.
You also need get some aerosol spray with a crack-and-crevasse nozzle, then drill small holes under all the kitchen counters and spray them for about 5 seconds to get a full coverage. Do the same for any other sealed spaces you can’t get to, including the fridge motor compartment. Also spray any and all cracks you can find in you kitchen: door hinges, cracks at the edge or or between tiles, under the microwaves, under any drawer liner or organisers and so forth. Any crack that you can slip a playing card into is likely to be harbouring roaches. This is the most time consuming job, but spending an hour doing this will pay off in spades later.
You will also need to set off a bomb in the ceiling cavity, and while you are at it, it won’t hurt to do the whole building.
The idea of these steps is to take out as many of the critters as possible so they don’t overwhelm, the next steps with sheer numbers.
- Lay down a barrier so they cant move.
Buy some residual insecticide. You can use aerosols, but it’s much cheaper ans safer to buy a pump pack type thing like this. Or you can but the concentrate and a cheap pressure sprayer from a hardware store or online, and mix it yourself even cheaper.
Whatever method you choose, make sure that you are using a residual insecticide. It has to state clearly on the label that it’s residual, or that it works for 6 months or more. If you don’t use a residual insecticide for this step you are wasting your time.
Note, I don’t recommend the Raid bug barrier. Cypermethrin has been so overused for the past 20 years that most roaches are at least partially immune to it. Try to find a Cyfkuthrin or Bifenthrin insecticide for better results.
Once you have your residual insecticide, lay down a barrier across your entire house. Spray every inch of the skirting boards/wall bases/base of built in cupboards. Spray every inch of all door and window frames. Spray the edges of all shelves in all cupboards, and the base of all drawers (empty them of food and cutlery first of course). Spray the underside of all shelves and drawers. Spray the rear of every benchtop/counter where it joins the wall.
If you are feeling very extreme and don’t have small children, spray the whole uncarpeted floor area and the whole of the topside of all shelves and drawers.
The point of this step is to lay down a barrier of poison that the insect will die when it crosses. If the insect can’t move from it’s hiding place to a source of water or food, it will die. And if it does move across the barrier, it will die. If you have too many roaches to start with and haven’t completed Step 1 thoroughly, they can physically wear away the barrier. So reduce the numbers first.
- Clean up any survivors.
Wait at least a week, and then start cleaning up the survivors. Buy few syringes of roach bait. These things are gold, but if you have more than a few roaches, they will be eaten before they even make a dent in the population. So complete steps 1 and 2 first. Lay out beads of bait about the size of a split pea. Place at least 2 on every pantry shelf and under the kitchen sink. Place at least 1 in every drawer. Place one every two metres around the skirting boards of the kitchen and bathroom, and any room where you still see roaches. Place one every metre on any benchtops used for food preparation or cleaning.
These baits are expensive, but they are worth every cent. They will attract roaches that have managed to avoid the residual barrier, often killing them simply by luring them onto the spray barrier. Any roach still alive eats the bait and dies.
At this stage your home should be roach free.
Once you have achieved that status, keep it that way. Re-lay the barrier every 6 months whether you see roaches or not. Though you don’t need to be very thorough if you see no problem. Re-lay the baits in any food prep-areas every 12 months.
And now you can start piss-farting around with things like diatomaceous Earth, sticky traps, Borax and so forth. Those products work OK with small infestations, but they just can’t take out large numbers in heavy infestations.
Well said Blake, I’ll only add that the main hotspots for roach hang outs are the Stove, Refer and Water Heater.
If you live far enough North, and can completely drain your water pipes … let the house freeze up. Couple of weeks at 10ºF will kill them all and their eggies.