The Home Ownership Thread

[beargonefishing]

******* hell

we have a patch of rotting wood flooring right by our back door. almost certainly due to warping in the frame letting in water. this will cut into our home repair emergency fund. i just hope the repair doesn't end up making our floor look patched up and ******.

Insurance claim that ****.

 

[Fueco]

Insurance claim that ****.

Check your insurance policy. Ours wouldn’t cover water damage unless it was caused by something inside the house. Rainwater coming from improper drainage of our patio did not qualify.

 

[Ataturk]

I hate this house so much. The doors are not sealed well. We get tons of spiders, plus (worse) the occasional cockroach (American, thank god). I spread bifenthrin outside yesterday because it was supposed to rain today, but now it's not and I'm too lazy to water it in.

About to drop another $100 $200 on insecticides. Probably giving myself cancer, but it's worth it.

But hey... the chimney swifts have finally moved out.

You can buy bifenthrin concentrate for about $40 a gallon. It's just as easy as the granules, if not more so since you can spray it directly onto the walls/doors/windows/whatever. You can even spray it inside if you want.

 

[jbarwick]

You can buy bifenthrin concentrate for about $40 a gallon. It's just as easy as the granules, if not more so since you can spray it directly onto the walls/doors/windows/whatever. You can even spray it inside if you want.

You comment made me think about what our pest control people use so I called them. Seems they use something called Termidor on the outside and I can buy a bottle of concentrate for $70 which will make 25 gallons or a little more than 6yrs of treatments. Doing it myself will save like $1,600. No wonder they throw in free indoor treatment when we ask for it which they also gave me the name for!

Just need some dedicated sprayers and I can do this myself.

 

[imatlas]

The point of hiring an exterminator is to outsource the cancer.

 

[Van Veen]

You comment made me think about what our pest control people use so I called them. Seems they use something called Termidor on the outside and I can buy a bottle of concentrate for $70 which will make 25 gallons or a little more than 6yrs of treatments. Doing it myself will save like $1,600. No wonder they throw in free indoor treatment when we ask for it which they also gave me the name for!

Just need some dedicated sprayers and I can do this myself.

You can get Taurus SC (generic Termidor) even cheaper. We had a huge ant problem when we moved in here. I sprayed around the perimeter of the house, windows, doors, and any other potential point of entry. It completely took care of the problem in days. The only problem is you can only apply it every 6 months at full strength, and about 4 months later I'm starting to see some ants again. And supposedly it works on roaches, but if it did, it's not working now. If you do half strength you can use it quarterly, or you can rotate it with another product. That's why I'm trying now. I'm also buying some other products like baits and sprays that will hopefully supplement the outdoor stuff.

That's one silver line of this ****** place... I'm learning a lot about DIY pest control. There's a lot of free advice out there, and there are online stores that sell kits.

 

[jbarwick]

The point of hiring an exterminator is to outsource the cancer.

This made me laugh waaay more than it should have.

 

[jbarwick]

@Van Veen - How do you spray near garages? Just on the concrete? Also, for doors do you do similar?

I know our guy will only spray as high as he can standing on the ground.

 

[Van Veen]

@Van Veen - How do you spray near garages? Just on the concrete? Also, for doors do you do similar?

I know our guy will only spray as high as he can standing on the ground.

I’ve only done it once. I just did what the label said, basically sprayed a 12-18” band on the ground and up the house, and a similar band around windows and doors. I didn’t spray 2nd floor windows but I used another indoor/outdoor aerosol spray around the window frame.

You just need the bugs to cross the pesticide, then they take it back and share it with the colony. (I guess ants eat their dead.) The point isn’t to repel them.

 

[patrickBOOTH]

When I moved into my place a decade ago I was literally the first person to move into the new building. I had an insane cockroach problem. I would wake up the go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and end up stepping on them. There would be like 10 of them in my bathtub every morning. I was spraying Raid like a madman and I was setting traps. They were dying and I was catching them, but they just kept coming. I finally called an exterminator that came and pretty much did the exact same thing. I thought I was just going to have to live at peace with my new friends.

I decided to seal up everything that I could, I sealed up the overflow drains in the sink and tub, made sure the tub stopper was engaged. They still came. Finally, I decided to get some expandable foam. I noticed a small gap in the wall where the piping for the sink comes in. Loaded it with expandable foam and never saw a cockroach again.

I was mad at this point because it was such a simple solution and a solution that an exterminator should have known and pointed out right away. You'd think it was their profession to keep bugs out of people's homes so they know all of the tricks, right? Wrong. That should have been the first thing the guy looked for.

 

[imatlas]

Then how would they ever get repeat business?

 

[Numbernine]

Back in the day I never understood why they called the end of a marijuana cigarette a roach. I seen lots of roaches in Louisiana and they didn't look remotely like that little brown thing. After I moved to California I was sitting in a kitchen and someone said " Oh! Look a roach" and I understood.

 

[Ataturk]

Termidor is magic because it doesn't repel bugs like most other insecticides (including bifen) do. It's expensive to be spraying on surfaces though. Usually it's used as a soil drench for termites (where it lasts years). Presumably the soil drench would work on ants too. I haven't seen them in my house since I did it.

 

[otc]

Yeah, my secret middle school girlfriend I met in a Blink 182 mIRC chatroom, lol.

I got nude pictures sent to me by a chick in an IRC chatroom for a real time online game.

Then a day or two later, there was someone on the server who said he was her husband or something. Young me was confused and didn't know what to do, so I just felt bad for him.

 

[patrickBOOTH]

That's all you can do