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Home
Maintenance: Insect Pests
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Suggestions
for how to do it yourself
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Summary: Many home
maintenance projects can be done by the owners
themselves thereby saving thousands of dollars.
This includes most pest
control and pest
management projects. Doing it yourself is
less expensive and may be safer in the long run.
Jack DeAngelis, PhD
OSU Ext. Entomologist
(ret.)
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Pest management vs. pest control
Pest management is a relatively
new term that aims to recognize that our goal
should be to reduce, or manage,
pest numbers below some damage threshold. Pest
management is mainly practiced in agriculture
and home gardening where one of the goals is to
maintain a balance of natural predators.
Sometimes you'll see the term integrated
pest management used.
On the other hand the practice of pest
control seeks to eliminate
(exterminate) any potential pest. For example,
most people would not be satisfied with just
reducing the number of carpenter ants in the
walls of their home but might be ok with only
reducing, or managing,
the number of aphids in their garden to a level
that does not affect production.
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DIY pest control around home
Pest control companies ("exterminators" is
an outdated term that these companies avoid) often
sell routine maintenance treatments. However, in
terms of protecting your investment the most
important thing you can do is an annual
inspection for water and insect damage, rather
than regular treatment. Some pest control companies
will do this inspection for you but they are easy to
do yourself and you'll be surprised how much you
learn about your home. If a problem is detected then
you can decide if a pest control service call is
needed.
By getting more involved in pest control
decisions you can maintain control over how much
pesticide is used around your home so that in the
long run it may be a safer place to live. The articles listed in the table (right)
contain a wealth of information to get you started.
Most projects can be done successfully with a few
simple tools but see the DIY
Pest Control for a list of those few pest
control projects that should not be done by
most homeowners on their own.
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DIY
Articles - Protecting Your Home
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Mission: To provide accurate,
up-to-date and unbiased information for solving
common insect and mite problems around your home,
business and landscape using least-toxic methods.
Jack DeAngelis, Ph.D.
Please see the Disclaimer statements as
well.
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