Pompano Beach's Complete Guide To Effective Carpenter Ant Control

No Pompano Beach pest control plan is complete without a strong focus on carpenter ant control. Carpenter ants in your house are a disaster that can wreak havoc and destroy parts of your property. An infestation of these pests is no joke; if untreated, carpenter ant damage can lead to structural weaknesses in your home. These damages put you and your family at risk and are costly to repair.

Continue reading to learn how to identify a potential carpenter ant problem and how Great Southern Environmental Services can provide professional aid to fix your crisis.

Obvious Signs Of A Carpenter Ant Infestation

Carpenter ants in Pompano Beach often get mistaken for termites. While termites also attack wood, carpenter ants don't eat wood and only nest in it. Furthermore, the two pests look different from one another. Carpenter ants in your house will appear black or dark brown and large—average length being 5/8 of an inch—contrasting termites, which have a smaller, cream-colored body. Carpenter ants also have a pinched or defined waist, whereas termites do not. Lastly, termites typically remain tucked away from sight in their colonies, unlike carpenter ants which actively forage for food outside their nests. If you regularly spot big, black ants crawling through your home, that is a surefire sign your property may have unwelcome guests.

Here are some signs of carpenter ants you should look out for:

• Rustling, clicking, or buzzing sounds within walls.
• Piles of sawdust or wood shavings.
• Winged ants near holes or cracks in ceilings and walls.
• Hollow-sounding wood.
• Tunnels or holes running through the structural wood of your home.

All The Problems Carpenter Ants Can Create Around Your Home

Most of the other signs of carpenter ants have to do with the damage they cause to your home. If you’ve ever seen an ant farm in a glass terrarium, you know exactly how ants tunnel through the dirt. Now, imagine carpenter ants tunneling just like that through your home’s floor joists, support beams, wall studs, and more. If left untreated, their tunneling can cause warped walls, sagging ceilings, sinking floors, and poorly fitting windows and doors. And in extreme cases, these pests can weaken the soundness of a property enough to cause full-on collapses of ceilings and walls.  

Environmentally-Friendly Carpenter Ant Prevention Tips

It’s a lot easier to prevent carpenter ants than it is to remove them. While you might try sprays or foggers to get rid of carpenter ants, these over-the-counter products are often ineffective and toxic to the environment. Before anything, homeowners must take preventive measures. Here are several simple steps that go a long way to keep ants at bay: 

• Seal off all cracks and holes in your home’s exterior to prevent entry to ants.
• Ensure all the wood in your home is dry and hard to make it tougher to infest.
• Trim tree and shrub branches back away from your house. 
• Make sure there’s no other wood contact with your home (for example, firewood stored against the side of your house). 
• Keep all indoor and outdoor trashcans sealed with tight lids to keep ants out of potential food sources. 
• Store all pantry foods in airtight containers to mask smells. 

The Best Way To Get Rid Of Carpenter Ants

If you end up with a carpenter ant infestation, DIY ant control solutions are not the way to go. Things like sprays or granules rarely kill the entire infestation. Instead, they merely kill part of it and make room for the surviving ants to move into the places the dead ants used to infest. To eliminate an infestation, help from experts is best.

Here at Great Southern Environmental Services, we offer the best Pompano Beach pest control in the business! Our carpenter ant control solutions can eradicate your entire carpenter ant infestation and make sure it never comes back. Call us or visit our contact page to get started!