(i apologize if this isn’t the correct forum for this question, i’m new here & i’m desperate…it does involve preserving the quality of my hard wood floor, though…)
we are getting a lot of rain here in Northern California, and the ants who live in our crawl space are seeking refuge. unfortunately, they’ve found a long crack at the juncture of our hardwood floor & wall in our bedroom!
we just bought our house (small 1912 bungalow) last september and are new to homeowning. what can i use to seal this crack to keep out the ants? it’s barely a milimeter in width, just enough room for these ants to get through.
thx in advance for your recommendations! we’ve got caulk, but it’ll really mess up the edge of the hardwood flooring.
Replies
I'd probably fill it with epoxy using a syringe apparatus of some sort.
You need to use something flexible to cope with expansion and contraction [if any] of the timber flooring.
Tape either side of the joint to be caulked and remove the tape after smoothing off the caulk.
HD and Lowes stock colored caulks in quite an extensive range of colors -- you should find something there to match either the flooring ot the baseboard.
IanDG
thanks for your suggestions, that's perfect!
the problem isn't the crack in your floor, it's the ants. Having fought the Great Ant Wars of 2000-2005 myself I can say that if it's not that crack/gap, it'll be another one.
My first course of action would be to go down to the hardware store and pick up some oxalic acid and sprinkle it in the crack itself, but more importantly all over the crawl space. It'll kill 'em dead double quick.
yeah, i've been considering buying some boric acid and sprinkling it down there (similar action to your suggested oxalic acid--man, we have a ton of oxalis weeds all over our garden, perhaps we could cultivate it under the house? :-)...it's extremely difficult to get into this crawl space, and i'm actually not sure i want to kill all the ants, given that they serve a purpose in my garden & yard.i may resort to this soon, however. thanks for your suggestion (& your empathy!). you are correct that with our house, there will always be another gap/crack/opening for them to find, i'm sure.
Trap a few of the 'critters' in a pill bottle or baby food jar. Show it to an exterminator. They can immediately tell if it's termites or carpenter ants. Either way, the easiest method is to have the house properly treated for the 'ants'. If they show up in one spot, you've got them in several spots. It's just that they usually hide INSIDE the wall and can't be seen even though they are in the wall. I just had my house treated because I had to do some wallboard patching. When I opened up the wall, it was alive with carpenter ants. You can see where the ants had eaten away part of the 2 x 4! A good blast of Ant and Wasp killer brought hundresd of them tumbling out of the wall. I used the shop vac to pick them up as fast as they came out of the wall. The next morning I had a professional do the whole house for me. A bit $$$ but well worth it. They have the proper equipment AND guarantee their work. By the way, If you recently purchased the house it should have had an ant & termite inspection. You may want to have a good 'talk' to the people who did the inspection.
SawdustSteve
I was once told by a professional exterminator that sugar ants (pretty small) can travel inside a telephone cord in the space between the individual wires and the insulation that wraps the whole cable. He meant the small stuff that you have in your walls, not the stuff on the utility poles.
The point he was making is that you will not keep ants out of your house. You need to remove them at their source, or remove the reason they have for coming into your house.
There is no doubt that there are cracks, holes, and other openings larger than this one that you haven't noticed.
The bug man also said mice can fit through a hole the size of a dime, rats need a quarter.
nanda,
Place several small dishes with sugar water in them. When the ants establish a trail to the sugar water. Remove it and replace it with something like Max Force ant bait. You will have to live with ants for about 3 to 4 days. but you will notice a reduction in 2 days. It's hard to not want to clean them up but you need to leave them alone. They will empty the bait traps and it will end up killing the nest.
With all the rain, they are just looking to get a dry location.
http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/2000/2064.html
Good luck
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