Even though your garage is the ideal place to park your car, store your bikes, and store your tools, pests also find it an ideal place for shelter. Keeping insects out of your garage is easy when you know how. But what do you need to do?
In this article, we’re going to go over how to keep insects out of your garage.
Here are the key takeaways:
- If you have gaps in walls, fill them with caulking
- Keep trash cans free and empty when possible
- Remove stagnant water
To keep bugs at bay, keep your garage tidy and clear of tempting items like water, food, and places to nest.
How to Keep Insects Out of Your Garage
1. Be on the Lookout for Anthills
It’s important to prevent avoidable problems from occurring. Check the foundation of your home once a month. Look around your foundation for signs of anthills and ant population growth.
Due to their size, ants can enter garages and the house, which can be quite annoying. If you want to catch them before they enter your home, you can set ant bait traps outside your house and around brick areas.
2. Fill In Gaps With Caulk
Caulking guns are great for filling in cracks or holes in garage walls. The best caulk to use is silicone caulk. Fill in small cracks in walls with caulk to prevent insects from entering.
A small hole won’t prevent insects from entering. You may not think that minuscule creatures like ants could fit into even the tiniest cracks, but they can.
Check your door and window seals to ensure that they are weather-stripped as carefully as possible. Insects will get through the tiniest cracks, including under the doors! Use foam or stripping to seal up any areas you find.
3. Keep the Trash Free of Unnecessary Odors
People don’t associate garbage with aesthetic appeal. The trash of one man is the feast of a bug. To deter bugs and rodents from entering your trash, avoid leaving exposed, smelly garbage in your trash cans, recycle bins, and compost bins. Fruit flies love rotting veggies and fruits, and will happily set up shop in your garage.
It’s best to rinse containers, cans, and bottles before throwing them away. Watch out for items that have been in contact with raw meat, as, over time, they might emit some strong odors. Likewise, you can put pungent seafood scraps in double bags.
4. Keep Your Garage Bug-Free by Cleaning Your Trash Can
When it comes to removing or preventing bugs in your garage, this step is crucial. Keeping your trash can clean is a good idea.
Leaks and spills can often collect on the bottom. Having these smells close to your home can attract pests over time.
The task of cleaning trash cans is not a fun one, but it is a necessary one.
5. Reduce Clutter
Keeping your garage clean and organized is a great way to prevent pest infestations. You should store your belongings in plastic or other weather-resistant containers, not cardboard, to avoid bugs and critters nesting in your belongings.
It’s important that before you store your items, you make sure they are pest-free before putting them away.
Keeping your garage clean and organized is a great way to prevent pest infestations.
6. Clean Up Stagnant Water
The presence of water is one of the main attractants for mosquitoes. Water cans, barrels, buckets, and other water containers are typical homes for these irritating pests. A stagnant water source is another breeding ground for mosquitoes. And the more mosquitoes multiply, the more difficult it is to get rid of them!
To avoid this, make sure your garage is free of stagnant water.
Do Pests in the Garage Pose a Danger?
Some pests like termites, fire ants, and scorpions clearly pose a danger to life and property. Most infestations, though, are not of the life-threatening variety. Mostly home and garage pests are annoying and gross.
Many websites will over-exaggerate the risks of pest outbreaks in the hopes of you hiring them to exterminate the pests! But many issues can in fact be handled by homeowners, and most pests are an aesthetic concern rather than a life concern.
But if you do have pests like black widows or fire ants, you need to take them seriously!
Garages Are Home to What Types of Insects?
1. Garage spiders
To survive, spiders need to eat insects that are smaller than themselves, making it difficult to survive in modern homes equipped with pest control measures. To find food sources, insects make their way into spaces prone to pest infestations, such as garages and basements.
Once they have made their way inside, they spin threads and lay eggs.
2. Sowbugs in the Garage
The sowbug is a land-dwelling crustacean that is distributed throughout the world. A sowbug can only be found in moist areas due to its lack of a respiratory closing device and an exoskeleton coated in wax that reduces water loss. They are inactive during the day to prevent moisture loss, hiding under objects when the sun is shining.
Some enter homes via door thresholds and can be found around buildings. Sowbug infestations are particularly prevalent in homes with sliding glass doors. Multiple sowbugs found inside a home indicate that there are many outside the house.
3. The Garage is Full of Flies
Flies can infest garages and other parts of your home. Air currents and odors attract flies to buildings. It’s common for them to enter garages through open garage doors. You can find house flies landing on surfaces throughout the room, such as walls, boxes, and containers.
Flies can infest garages and other parts of your home.
4. Garage Ground Beetles
A ground beetle gets its name from its habit of living on the ground. You can usually find them hiding under rocks and boulders during the daytime. Most species of insects are nocturnal, which refers to the fact that they are active at night. Ground beetles enter a home through an open door or crawl under a poorly sealed garage door.
Conclusion
Garages are often ideal insect refuges. Insects can seek water inside during the summer heat; in colder months, they will seek warmth. It’s common to have something living in the garage at any given time!
Regardless of the season, an insect or pest infestation needs to be eradicated as soon as possible.Â
It is best to avoid getting pests in the garage as much as possible. By carefully sealing your garage and watching out for dirty buckets and standing water, you’ll be 80% of the way there. Good luck!
