German Roaches in Residential

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Find out why German roach residential control is not that much different than in commercial accounts, I had a request about talking regarding German cockroaches in residential accounts and how we can deal with those and possibly a small commercial and frankly it’s not that much different than what you would do with a commercial account because you still have human habitation with food and water and habitat going on dearly. And. You also have to deal with an insect that absolutely loves to live with us because we provide everything that they need.

So when I’ve got a residential German Cockroach account

Let’s say it’s a brand-new service I’m going in for German cockroaches and this is something I’ve done or haven’t. It seems like a million times in my career. Starting in the early 1970s and when I go inside one of the things, I learned very very early on is to interview the people involved in the process the resident whether it’s an apartment or a home to find out where the insects really are. And oddly enough some of the most observant individuals in a residential situation are the kids and you have to remember that question the most important question you ask a client when you’re doing the investigative process. And it’s a question that was taught to me. Good Lord. Now probably 35 years ago for Austin Frishman that is in regards to the question where is the last place you saw and fill in the blanks in the past. So with regard to roaches. Where was the last place you saw Rosie and the clients going to think about that for a minute.

Maybe you’re standing in the kitchen the living room or someplace else in the home. You’re going to see their eyes light up and they’re gonna go oh yes. Yes they were in the kitchen or they were in the bathroom or they were wherever. And the best thing you could do with that client at that moment in time is look at them and say please show me because when you go to that place you truly welcome their solution. They want you to help them. They’re trying to show you where they’re seeing things. So pay attention to what they’re telling you and go into that area and take a look at this maybe a place where you want to put a monitor to now. It’s no different than doing the forest monitoring process on a restaurant or personal account. It’s just in most cases monitors. That’s what you want to do is with the client’s cooperation it’s their home. It’s their castle is their palace. It’s where they have the most peace of mind with their family. You want to monitor that area. So you have to pay attention big time to the distribution of children and pets in that environment. So go ahead and get that monitor plate make sure it’s secure in such a fashion that nobody is going to bother it. As far as the type of monitor I prefer a brand style monitor that’s easy to put in action. And in my particular case I prefer the process monitor because when I take him out of the little plastic sleeve that they’re in and unwrap them they’re wrapped in a packet of time I can pop that thing into shape in a moment. I don’t have to fiddle around trying to mold it or anything else.

I just pop it open positive together done tear off the release paper of course but I can place that out where I need to. So I can make observations. Now you don’t necessarily have to leave these in place for months or weeks particularly if it’s an active situation. What you’re trying to do is to figure out the distribution of the roaches in that space and keep in mind as a professional you may not be the first exterminator in that house or maybe they’ve got a lot of things on their own before they’ve contacted you. So you’ve got a population especially if there were spray and stuff that could be somewhat disrupted and you need to find out what the actual distribution of the insect is. So based on the observations you’re making during that little tour where was the last place you saw. Keeping in mind the kids are very good at remembering these things go ahead and put those devices out taking care to make sure that children and pets don’t encounter them. Granted they’re nontoxic but nobody wants to deal with it more with a little child. Or a pet. That can be painful and heartbreaking. So you don’t want to do that to maybe you sure there as convenient as possible to the distribution that’s been identified but you don’t put any of those folks in danger.

Now Miss Horan once you decided or found out where they are and you may let those traps be in place for a few days that’s fine. Go ahead and set a process up with your client. It may be one of those situations you put them out today and come back tomorrow once again. That’s fine. Just go based on what’s best for that particular client. And you can judge that when you’re there. But once you return and you see what the distribution is you’ll look at this going hey wait a minute how is this property maintained. Because. If it’s a very neat tidy property and I’ve seen this and I’ve gone into particularly apartments before frustrated I’ve made some catches I’ve done the observations.

And in those real clean units the first weapon attack the roaches with the vacuum. And I remember doing an apartment complex a number of years ago. And we had. Very clean apartments because for the most part it was a once in an old folks apartment complex but it was for retirees very active all the units were clean. This particular complex only had about 70 units in it and every one of them was just as tidy as could be.

But they were fighting German roaches. So I was going in the PMP doing the work on this we identified distributions for easy sex on our craft. We went ahead and took the drawers out around the refrigerator and the stove area because it was pretty much the same in every apartment. And keep in mind the stove and the refrigerator there were appliances they produce warmth.

And sure enough in the framework that was up against those units for the captain when the doors were taken out we found lots of roaches in their front backlit all the way around for frames and things like that. Now the first thing we did was vacuum those insects up. We could have sprayed them. That was a message that a lot of people used at that time. But what would have happened. We probably would have scattered the population and moved him around. So what we did in these clean apartment is go ahead and vacuum picked up a lot of what we could and right away the individuals living there were gone. You’ve given us so much relief with just a vacuum. Yes. We had no forest products at that time. This was kind of in the infancy of using cockroach bait and in that particular case we put out what was at the time Stapleton space now called Mama 2000 by nice.

And we put it out with putty knives and so the bait placements were larger than what you would get out of a fake gun but it dropped the populations in the unit dramatically. I mean it went to nothing because the way we judge did was what the complaints were from the individuals and we did have

Ropes traps out there that were going to look very low or zero count that we kind of kept an eye on. But this is a good way to do the work. And we have better tools now than we had then. We have a better road strap in that protest craft with the ramps on it. Of course you all know if you’ve got a commitment ramp on the trap it should increase or will increase your cash rate because the roaches go up the commitment ramp and drop on to the surface.

It works very very well. Now as far as the base compounds a lot of improvements have been made in the top down over the original MRF product that we used back then. Now I recently had some residential situations where the house was rough small house in this particular case that were foster children involved in the house. So we really had to give these folks some relief. Now in that particular situation the PMP made the choice of a different product know more along the lines of a more modern thing. And so we went ahead and did the distribution of product in there. We were going to be able to introduce any cleaning that wasn’t going to happen. And so vacuuming was kind of if I wanted to

Vacuum those cabinets and spaces around the stove and around the refrigerator I had to dig my way through pots and pans stuff and I mean it was just they were all over the place. There was no way I was going to attack that with a vacuum because it wasn’t a clean environment in the first place.

And there’s been a lot of work done lately with treating in these situations where maybe we haven’t got the highest level of maintenance in residential. And Jeannie Miller has done a lot of this with her work through the university system. She’s with and then going into low income housing and she’s proving once again that the type of work that was done with the MRF 2000 low income housing was a valid process in its day. And she’s bringing this back to the forefront and reintroducing it to a whole new group of DMD. And sure enough it’s having success in this particular case. We apply to products ask for the label and I know one of them was hurt the dry floor we use that where we could that it wasn’t going to make a match and we also used a gel product and lightly it just escapes me as to which one that was but we made the distribution of product. And I remember I had the opportunity to go back to the house the following day. And I had done some of those placements and I went back and checked through that kitchen for those same placement knowing where I put them in cracks and crevices and that type of thing is framework around drawers where I can get to it I put a little dab of product on top of there and you know what all of the base placements that I had made myself because I knew they were gone. Nonetheless. The roaches had consumed all of it. And so we kept an eye on that house and we kept an eye on that situation

And lo and behold the roach population dropped dramatically dropped. Now we had some occasional flare ups in there because the insects were into all kinds of boxes and storage were being shifted around and there were things coming in and out all the time with the foster kids. But you know what.

We brought it back to a very livable situation for the people that were in that structure and frankly reintroduction was taking place I suspect every week or so. New children were introduced to the property and removed for someplace else. So it was a rough situation but we got it taken care of. Now the other thing you want to look at in those residential properties and once again is with commercial is Don’t neglect the use of dogs.

We have some very good dust products that are long haul long term voids and cracks and crevices that are not going to flare anything up.

They’re not going to move insects around. So take a look at products like 940 I’ve talked about this before I can put it out as a liquid. I can put it out as a home I can put it out as a dust. That product is golden have you used it in the right kind of duster.

I mean if you’re doing anything outside of a small space you really need to have a Texas sized duster because that’s the unit you need or the product in when there are other dusters that produce volume but you have pressure dusters. You have various types of pump dusters they all have their place small hand dusters have their place. But if you’re working in a consistent space then you need to do a distribution of product in the quickest time possible the most efficiently pesticide dusters events tool.

If you’re looking at hand dusters the little guys we have a variety of those. And frankly if I’m working out of a service kit I have one of those in the service kit so that if I need to work in a small space a little bit of dust I can

Look for anything larger than a second or a wall. I’m taking the tech aside doctor because I have to do call him dusting underneath something I’m going to take maybe a pressure duster or I’m going to take one of the pump style dusters dusters are just like screwdrivers and wrenches and a tool box. You need different sized pieces of equipment for various types of work that you’re going to be doing.

Now the other thing you may want to look at in that residential situation is foam because some areas can be formed very effectively water walls and things such as that. You may want to hold those instead of just them.

Take a look at the situation. We now have a variety of homing devices for that. I think the most common that most of us are running into. We’ve read the ads and seen them used in commercial accounts are the farmers available from Nice in the true tech farmers.

The most common when somebody has a power or is going to be probably the power car 2000 good piece of gear you can do a lot of farming work with it. Now if that’s too big for you if you don’t have the real estate to carry it or you have got other stuff you’re working with maybe that piece of equipment doesn’t work in some residential account. In that case you want a farmer that’s a little bit smaller. We have a little textile farmers gardener has a new one for example is very handy if you want to go smaller than that.

Ford has essentially a micro line now of application tools dry liquid and Hall and you can take a look at those.

I like them because they’re handy and they also have a bell system so I can put everything into my belt pouches and maybe have a service kit as well and be fully equipped for whatever I need to do in those residential or commercial situations without revisiting the truck or bringing things in on trolleys or I have to leave them parked somewhere and lock them up and keep them handy and that type of thing.

So in residential situations you have a huge number of options. And I would recommend that you always have the monitoring system put together for yourself. Have those monitors locked away. Now there are

Monitoring devices you can use that will hold the cardboard monitor the products has a new one now it’s very low lying. You can use sections of a monitoring trap in there and it’s tucked away it’s very shallow and flat. It hides beautifully. You can also use the. Wide

Bay or the insect bait stations to see them because you can lock those and I can see maybe installing one of those under a sink with monitoring boards and if you don’t want to use insecticide it’ll bring the insects in because of the scent coming off of those folks. Products do have an attractive built into that glue and so you can get insects coming in there and monitor and only apply if you need to. But what I’m saying here is go into that residential situation

Find out what’s happening you have the tools you have the equipment it’s critical that you communicate with the client so that you understand and they understand what’s really happening. And the bottom line of this whole thing is get in there and give them back peace of mind in the place that they live and take away the fear factor from those insects they get roaches or whatever else you might counter that you’re dealing with but peace of mind is what they’re looking for and you can provide that if you approach it properly. And so I hope last few minutes I’ve at least given you a little bit of guidance on what you can do in a residential account for German cockroaches. It’s no different than any other human space. All human space is valuable for one reason or another.

And when you go into it as a professional your job is to protect people and property from pests. Keep that in mind and keep in mind giving that client peace of mind you’ll do the right thing. You’ll make a good living doing this work and you’ll protect the public.