In the last two days, I have killed, crushed, and destroyed over fifty fleas inside my home.
We have no pets of any kind, and we have no evidence whatsoever of rats or mice in the house.
Where the hell are all these little bloodsucking bastards coming from? I toasted our front yard with some Sevin 5% dust yesterday in an attempt to murderize them.
Anyone have experience with flea infestations in a home WITHOUT pets?
What have you used to effectively control outdoor fleas around your home?
No experience with flea infestation w/o pets. But when we did get infested (due to the cat), our best solution was bug bomb (the kind you need to be out of the house for half a day or so). It worked very well, and no lingering odor or anything.
(but I had the strangest dreams that first night…just kidding).
I don’t know that there’s much you can do to keep the outdoor fleas from getting in. Once they’re in, though, short of simply leaving (removing their food supply) for a while, the bug bomb is the only effective thing I know of. They hide in the carpet (but vacuuming won’t take care of them - seems they can either hunker down or keep moving to avoid it), and they’ll just keep thriving.
Bug bomb twice. Once for the adults, and once for the eggs that hatch into adults later. There’s a recommended time spacing in order to maximize your chance of getting them all, but I don’t remember what it is. Most flea bombs will tell you on the package.
Oh, my experience: when I moved to college, I had bought an old couch from a yard sale, and it came up infested. I bug bombed twice with bombs from the grocery store, and it took care of the problem with no fuss.
Some bombs (and you definitely want to look for these) have a growth inhibitor included that greatly improves the chance of keeping your home free of fleas.
Depending on where you live (are you in the NH summer at the moment?) the warmth will encourage the hatching of dormant eggs that could have been there for YEARS just waiting.
Try the bombs, twice now (like Ogre suggested), but I would also recommend doing it AGAIN during the cooler months, just to be sure.
If all else fails, get a cat. The fleas will then hang out on it rather than annoy the buggery out of you.
While crushing them with your vast strength might be satisfying in the short run, bombing them gives more relief in the long run. I used to have indoor/outdoor cats, who would keep us supplied with more fleas than we really needed, so we’d bomb the place occasionally. Our new cats are indoor only, and we’re much happier.
