Pest Control in Lakewood, WA

Pest control in Lakewood, the community between north Marysville and Smokey Point, deals with a housing stock that was built for a drier climate than the one it sits in. Ranch homes and split levels from the sixties through the nineties, on vented crawl spaces, with cedar siding, wide soffits and roofs that carry moss. Every one of those details is a pest feature on the wet side.

Crawl-space vent screens rust out and rats walk through them. Torn vapor barriers over damp soil raise the humidity of the whole underfloor, which softens the rim joist, which is where western carpenter ants build their satellite galleries. Moss holds water against the fascia, the fascia softens, and roof rats find the gap. It is all one problem wearing three different pest names.

The neighborhood also has blackberry. Blackberry is the rodent nursery of the Puget lowlands, and any hedgerow at the back fence line is a colony waiting for the first cold rain to move it fifty feet uphill into your crawl space. Ten feet of clear, open, dry ground between the brush and the foundation does more for a Lakewood house than any bait station.

Spring brings the ants, August the yellowjackets, September the male giant house spiders wandering across the living room floor, and October the rats. That calendar has not changed in decades and it will not change this year.

If you are hearing something in the crawl space or finding sawdust under a vent, describe it on the phone and get a proper inspection scheduled.

The seasonal pattern here is the textbook one. February and March: carpenter ant swarmers appear inside heated houses, months ahead of any outdoor flight, which means the colony is in the structure. April and May: odorous house ants line the caulk behind the sink and carpenter ants forage at dusk. Mid-August: yellowjacket colonies peak, switch to scavenging sugar and turn aggressive.

First week of September: the male giant house spiders wander. Last week of September onward: the rodents move, and Lakewood crawl spaces take the brunt of it because the vent screens are original and the blackberry is fifteen feet from the foundation.

None of this needs a subscription to fix. It needs quarter-inch hardware cloth on the vents, copper mesh and sealant at the pipe penetrations, a garage door sweep that touches concrete across its full width, the gutters cleared after the fall needle drop so the moss stops holding water against the fascia, the downspouts extended, the mulch pulled six inches off the siding and the limbs cut back six feet from the roof.

Then, if something is already inside, trapping goes first and sealing goes second. Doing it the other way round leaves a dead rat in a wall void.

Common calls in Lakewood

These three come up most often here. Every service is available across the whole area, and if what you have is not on this list, describe it on the phone.