These creepy crawling pests are often associated with garbage, dirty kitchens, and filth. They are also know for spreading a range of diseases and triggering asthma and other allergies.
Keeping a clean house is useful and very important in order to reduce food sources used by cockroaches, but regardless of how clean your house is they may still get inside and cause an infestation.
A cockroach can enter your home by catching a ride on items brought inside, or via open doors and windows, gaps in the home’s exterior, and even water drains and sewer pipes.
Usually, you don’t realize you have cockroaches until you see them crawling around our homes and businesses, but have you ever stopped to wonder where these crawling insects live?
Common types of cockroaches
In order to find where cockroaches live, we first must understand the type of cockroach we are dealing with. There are three main species of cockroaches which can be found in our homes and businesses are:
- American cockroach (Periplaneta Americana)
- Oriental cockroach (Blatta orientalis)
- German cockroach (Blatella germanica)
American cockroaches
American cockroaches prefer to live in warm environments. Because it is warm, they prefer the outdoors and can often be found in and around drains, sewer systems, garbage bins, trees and wood piles.
Oriental cockroaches
Like the American cockroach, the Oriental cockroach prefers the warm outdoors. However, they’re know too shy away from the light and seek out dark, moist spaces such as mulch pits, leaf piles, and under rocks and stones.
German cockroaches
German cockroaches prefer the indoors and will live in areas which are warm and humid. The kitchen or a bathroom are prime locations, but it isn’t uncommon to find in other parts of the home if food and moisture are available.
Where do look?
Think about where you keep your trash when you throw it away … is it in a garbage can close to the house? In the garage? Because cockroaches prefer food and warmth, they’ll often move into kitchens and bathrooms. You can find them:
- Inside cabinets and under sinks
- Behind refrigerators and under stoves
- Near food prep areas
- Along floor base boards and corners
Outside, cockroaches are often found in moist, shady areas under decks and places where plumbing and sewer leaks. You’ll also find the:
- Under brush piles and mulch
- Crawl spaces
- Dumpsters & Garbage cans
- Hollow trees and fallen logs
- Wood piles
- Inside storage sheds
Cockroach control:
Prevention
- Store foods in airtight containers
- Empty bins regularly
- Clean up any and all food and drink spillages
- Rinse cans, bottles and plastics before recycling
- Seal all potential entry points with expanding foam
Removal
Once you see a cockroach, you most likely have a bigger problem. Where there’s one, there are always more. Removal and remediation of cockroaches can be very difficult, especially if you are trying to do it on your own. There are many pesticides and baits for cockroaches, but the chemicals used may not be safe or effective for inexperienced users.
Regardless of whether you have one cockroach or a thousand, removal is not a one-time solution. Cockroaches multiply quickly. Timing is everything. Sigma’s Quarterly Pest Control Service provides a continuing cycle of protection, implementation, and monitoring.
Call the cockroach experts – call Sigma Pest Control!
