All-American's Top Carpenter Ant Control Tips

Ants are usually a problem when they’re raiding your kitchen cupboards. But did you know that there is a particular type of ant that not only wants the food in your cupboards, but wants to use the wood in your home as a nesting place? These ants are carpenter ants and as their fitting name suggests, they burrow into the wood of your home to hollow it out and make it suitable for their large colonies. Think you might have carpenter ants? You will know by a couple of the signs they leave behind:

• Little piles of sawdust, wood shavings or “frass” around wooden beams or even cupboards are signs of carpenter ants in the house. These piles of sawdust are where the ant has begun to burrow into the wood and this is the debris left behind from their hard work.

• You may also just see carpenter ants wandering around your home, milling around the sugar bowl and climbing through your trash cans. Be sure to check out our pest identification page for carpenter ants: carpenter ant identification. Now you can see what type of ant you should be looking for!

• Carpenter ants will periodically ‘swarm’. This is when winged carpenter ants emerge from their nests to find other carpenter ants with which to mate. You may witness one of these swarms or only see the shed wings that are left behind after a swarm.

Upon finding carpenter ants in the house, you should call in a pest control professional immediately. Over time, carpenter ants will destroy the wood in your home, which can weaken your home’s structure as well as cause other extensive damages. These will eventually require expensive repairs. If you have a carpenter ant problem now, professional carpenter ant control services should be contacted to help get rid of these pests. Once a colony is established in your home, there is very little you can do on your own to remove it. With that being said, if you take a few precautions, you may be able to prevent carpenter ants from choosing your home to infest in the first place! Here are the top carpenter ant control tips from the experts at All-American Pest Control:

1. Don’t attract them to your property in the first place. They come in search of food and wood that looks easy to infest. Keep your food under wraps (nothing should stay out on countertops, food should be in air-tight containers and the garbage should be removed regularly from your home). Keep crumbs and spills cleaned up whenever they happen.

2. Make sure that the wood in your home’s structure is not weather or water damaged. This type of wood is much easier for carpenter ants to infiltrate. Replace wood that has been damaged and keep an eye on areas of your home that get especially damp, as these areas are especially attractive to carpenter ants.

3. If you have a deck, make sure the deck support beams rest on cement rather than directly on the ground. You will also want to make sure that there is no soil contact with any part of your house. Cleaning out the gutters can also help reduce the chance of a carpenter ant infestation.

4. Make sure that piles of firewood are stored appropriately. Don’t keep firewood piled against the side of the house- instead it should be elevated off the ground and kept as far from the house as is practical.

5. Maintain the trees and shrubs around your property. They should never touch the sides or roof of your home. Tree stumps should be completely removed too, because they will invite carpenter ant activity. Mulch and other decorative bark should be avoided as it can harbor these ants and provide nesting sites.

Following these helpful tips should help reduce your chances of falling victim to a carpenter ant infestation. If you would like more information about these pests or think you might already have a carpenter ant infestation, give the pros at All-American a call today. One of our highly experienced professionals can come out and inspect your property and let you know if these pests are present and what can be done to remove them from your home. 

Want to learn more about carpenter ant control? Click here to find out how we treat this nuisance and damaging pest.