How Do Ants Keep Entering My Home?

You sealed the cracks and cleaned the counters. Then you sprayed the ant trail you found out back, too, just for good measure. You’d think that would be enough, but here we go again—the ants are back.

If you're dealing with recurring ant problems in your Charlottesville home, they’re getting inside somehow. Here’s how ants find their way in and why stopping them is harder than it looks.

Ants can crawl into very small cracks.

The most common ant species in Charlottesville—odorous house ants and pavement ants—can fit through openings smaller than you’d expect. We’re talking about gaps the width of a credit card or less. As small as these ants are, even tiny cracks in your foundation that you’d never notice may as well be I-64.

Any gap where utility lines enter your home also works. Spaces around window frames. The tiny gap between your door and threshold. Cracks in mortar. Gaps in siding.

This is why you can seal up every obvious entry point, only for them to find new routes where you’d never even think to look.

Take home foundations, for example. Most homes in Charlottesville have small cracks in their foundation, and this is completely normal. Houses settle and develop hairline cracks over time because houses are heavy and they press down on the soil. But unfortunately, hairline cracks are big enough for ants.

Ants often crawl along house foundations and look for gaps. And then when they find one, they exploit it until they can’t, and find another one after that. The older the home, the worse the problem.

Ants live outside and go indoors for food and moisture.

You might think the ants are living in your home, but they’re not. The colony is actually outside—under your patio, in your mulch beds, up against your house, or in some random spot in your yard. Your home is just where they go to find food and water.

Ants need water, especially when it’s hot outside. They can find it in ample supply from leaky pipes, dripping faucets, condensation from AC units, and moisture under sinks. Once they find a reliable source, they establish trails to it.

So if you’re serious about stopping ants, it’s a good idea to look for plumbing leaks and fix them. Likewise, it’s a good idea to clean up food waste and put things like pet food in sealed containers.

But again, this only helps if you’re also addressing outdoor colonies. Otherwise, you can spend your whole day making life worse for worker ants, and the queen will just produce more. That is, unless you address the outdoor colony itself.

Get Rid of Ants for Good with Charlottesville Ant Control

Sealing entry points helps, as does eliminating food and water sources. But neither solves the core problem: getting rid of the outdoor colony, or in all likelihood, multiple colonies full of ants wanting to get inside.

Effective ant control requires treating outdoor colonies where ants live. And that’s outside, which is why we at Mosquito Squad of Charlottesville, when we apply our perimeter treatments, create barriers around your home that help stop ants before they find entry points.

This works for two reasons. First, because we treat where colonies establish themselves and, second, because we help prevent new ones from forming near your foundation. That way, we address the problem at the source instead of just managing the symptoms.

Ready to stop ants from entering your Charlottesville home? Call Mosquito Squad of Charlottesville at (434) 363-9274 or contact us online for a free assessment and quote.

Read about our 100% customer satisfaction guarantee!