Don’t Give Water to Roaches

As has been said, roaches evolved in the moist tropics. They can’t live without readily-available water to drink and they prefer a humid environment. If you’re serious about fighting roaches, then you must keep your house as dry as possible. Here’s some things to check for:

• Leaky pipes. Even a very slow leak — just a spoonful of water dripping each day into the cabinet area under the sink or into the space between pipes in the walls and floor — makes an ideal environment for roaches: liquid water to drink and lots of humidity. (There’s not much air flow under sinks or between walls, so any water that gets into places like that tends to stay there for a while.) Inspect your pipes to make sure there aren’t any leaks. Get a flashlight and look under your sinks, follow the pipes in your basement, peer in-between the walls wherever you can. If you spot a leak, get it fixed.

• Leaky caulk around sinks and tubs. Somewhat less obvious than a leaky pipe is the caulk around your sinks and tubs. The caulk is there to prevent water that gets splashed up onto the tile from seeping down in-between the sink (or tub) and the wall. If the caulk is cracked, dried up, inflexible, or shrunken then it should be replaced. Defunct caulk is just as bad (bad for you; good for roaches) as a leaky pipe. If your caulk is no good, then everytime you turn on the water you’re splashing a bit behind the sink and into the places where roaches like to hide; you’re providing the perfect habitat for them. Is you caulk good? If in doubt, tear it out and put in new caulk. Detailed instructions on how to do this are beyond the scope of this blog. But I will say that in my experience, caulk that is applied with a caulk gun tends to be better than caulk that comes in a ready-to-use tube.

• Bathroom, kitchen, and basement humidity. You must make all areas of your home as dry (low in humidity) as possible. This takes a special effort in the summer, when the outdoor area is humid. Make sure to run the exhaust fans in the kitchen when you are cooking and in the bathroom when you are showering. You might consider installing a timer on the exhaust fans so they can be left on for some time after your’re finished in the kitchen or bathroom, thus allowing the room to dry more completely. From time to time (once a week or so) open the doors of your sink cabinets to allow them to air out. Ventilation is a weapon in the roach war.
  
  If you see roaches in your basement, then your basement is probably too humid. If your clothes washer and dryer are in the basement, make sure the washer is draining properly (so there’s no standing water in the sink or drain) and make sure the dryer is properly vented (all dryer exhaust air should be vented outside). Consider installing a dehumidifier. Ideally, a dehumidifier should empty directly into the sink or floor drain (so it won’t stop working while it waits for you to empty its bucket). We got lucky and found a good dehumidifier at the local thrift store. I installed it over the basement sink, suspended from the ceiling, so the collected water goes down a hose and into the sink drain. No need to empty the bucket every day. The water flows through the hose (nothing more reliable than gravity!) and down the drain.

More to come!