Carpenter Ants!!

[leebee]

We have started seeing a few random carpenter ants (maybe 1 or 2 a week) but I am not naive enough to think that if we kill the ones we see, we'll get them all. We haven't seen many ants, no big swarms, and no "ant dust" so I am hoping we are getting them early, before they've become too extensive. I've been online and it seems it's almost impossible to get rid of them, short of having an exterminator come to the house, but I'd like to try before spending big bucks on the professionals. Does anyone have any suggestions for "home remedies" to get rid of the ants?

 

[erin1715]

We've seen a couple in our kitchen too. I put out some of those Terro liquid ant baits and they were eating that up this morning. Hopefully they take it back to the nest and share! It seems that ants are common this time of year. The woman I work with also noticed carpenter ants in her house and she called an exterminator.

 

[Goofy_Disney_Dad]

I hate to say it, but we tried home remedies and ended up just getting a professional. The home remedies and/or over the counter stuff just didn't do a complete enough job for us. Our guy comes once or twice a year, which is standard for where we live now, and we've never had an issue with pests since. We have monthly coverage established for our townhouse in Florida but we haven't lived there full time yet so I can't say whether that is often enough or not. I can't stand the thought of bugs crawling in the house so paying the exterminator was a good choice for us.

 

[NFLDERS]

The "Raid" brand of the liquid product mentioned by a pp has always worked for us. Also make sure you are not attracting (feeding) them.

 

[TheIncredibles!]

Carpenter Ants are drawn to moisture so before you start I would check all windows and doors, moldings, your roof etc to make sure you don't have a water/wood rot issue going on somewhere. If you find something, fix it don't just try and use chemicals etc otherwise you'll just get more ants. Have you seen the ants in one spot? If so that's where you start looking for a water issue.

 

[AppleDumpling]

Do you know where they are getting into your house? You need to find the point of entry and repair any damaged siding, roofing, fascia, soffit, flashing, etc., replace any rotted or wet wood and seal it up. If you have any dead or partially dead trees or a wood pile close to your house, you need to remove it as that is most likely where the ant colony's nest is.

If you're only seeing a few, it's possible they haven't nested within your home yet. Try a 50-50 mix of vinegar and water, put in a spray bottle and spray into the affected areas. Another home remedy that has worked for me to some degree is cinnamon. Then you can try the the pesticides.

 

[deedeetoo]

We had carpenter ants and had a very difficult time getting rid of them. We had professionals come and while that improved the situation, even that didn't entirely work. Then we had our porch rebuilt. The workers found that the porch was completely infested (even though we weren't seeing any at that time). They replaced all the bad wood and that solved the problem. That was about 10 years ago and haven't seen one since.

 

[leebee]

DH now tells me that he was finding the ants all last summer, mostly in the family room, but didn't mention it. He said there were more last year than I have found this year. However, last year we redid the deck, either treating and sealing or simply removing a large number of wet, rotten joists. I bet that's what attracted them. I just checked the decking, and everything seems solid and dry, so maybe I'll have a fighting chance here. A friend has recommended blowing boric acid dust into all the crevices and outlets we can access, so I'll give that a shot, too. Fingers crossed!!

 

[ez]

My experience with carpenter ants is, once you find where their nest is it's easy to get rid of them. Once I saw them crawling in my bedroom I didnt think anything of it, but then my daughter went to use the printer I had temporarily put on the floor while rearranging my desk, and she let out a horrible scream, they had nested in the printer, maybe they liked the ink idk. We also had a nest under our jacuzzi deck. I agree with the above posted look for bad wood. In my old house we hired sears and they couldnt do anything after several visits so I demanded my money back like it said in the guarantee. Then a couple months later when we went to move, a carpenter was repairing some soffit and fascia and he took down a piece of bad wood and my husband said literally thousands came pouring out. They are so yucky good luck.