While many pests may not seem particularly dangerous, they shouldn’t be left unchecked in or around your home. Pest management is essential to preventing what could be thousands of dollars in damage to your home and property, even if you’re not personally bothered by the occasional home invader.
What Types of Damage Can Pests Cause?
Pests may damage your property in a variety of ways, many of which occur simply by their presence in your home. Many household pests can stain or damage furniture and your home through their feces or urine or by chewing through wood and insulation in search of food or to collect materials for building a nest. These pest lifestyles can result in all kinds of damage to your home and property, including:
- Yellow or brown staining on walls and other surfaces
- Broken or chewed-through furniture, cabinetry, and wooden framing in the walls of your home
- Compromised wooden support beams and other structural damage
- Damaged and ineffective insulation
- Weakened lawns, gardens, and soil as a result of burrowing
- Many more problematic issues
Many household pests are also physically harmful to the people and animals living in your home, in addition to them causing property damage.
Top Property Damaging Pests in Kansas City
As a Kansas City homeowner, it’s important to know about all of the common household pests that are found throughout the region. Knowing the types of damage each pest can cause will allow you to be on the lookout for possible infestations. Here are four pests that cause the most damage to homes and properties in Missouri:
1. Termites
Kansas City homes are prone to infestations by subterranean termites, and these sneaky wood-destroying insects should never be left to their own devices! Termites have earned their reputation as one of the most dangerous pests in terms of property damage because of how quickly they can gnaw their way through the wood and completely destroy a house’s or building’s structural integrity. If you see any signs of termite activity in your home, don’t wait to seek the aid of pest management services near you!
2. Carpenter Ants
While less speedy than termites at destroying wood, carpenter ants make up for it by being difficult to distinguish from common ants you might find in your yard or kitchen. Knowing how to identify carpenter ants is vital to ensuring your home is free from wood destroyers because they are known to cause costly amounts of damage!
If you discover ant activity in your home and are able to get a close enough look, here are some distinguishing features of carpenter ants:
- A heart-shaped head
- Larger size than common ants, or ants of varying sizes
- Winged ants
You can also identify carpenter ants based on where you find them in your home. While regular ants are most likely to be found crawling around the floor in your kitchen, carpenter ants are more interested in wood and will most likely appear on your walls, especially near holes with sawdust collected beneath.
3. Carpenter Bees
Fun fact: ants aren’t the only insect species with a wood-destroying variant. Fortunately, carpenter bees are a lot less harmful than either termites or carpenter ants due to their solitary nature.
Carpenter bees prefer to fly solo, so finding one usually doesn’t mean a full-blown infestation on your hands. However, carpenter bees love to build their homes in wood tunnels they create, so one bee can cause a lot of damage if it finds its way into your home and is allowed sufficient time to settle in.
If you find a carpenter bee or signs of carpenter bee damage, this can mean your home is appealing to wood destroyers and should get checked out by a professional. You may have areas of exposed wood that are easy for pests to access, which puts you at risk of future infestations even if you don’t have damage right now.
4. Mice and Other Rodents
Home-invading rodents can leave quite a mess in your garage, kitchen, or dark corners of your home. To build a nice, cozy nest for themselves, rodents may tear into your home’s insulation and leave a whole mess of stains and unappealing smells in their path.
Mice in your garage can also put other personal property at risk, such as cars. In the colder months, mice may find it cozy to crawl up into a still-warm car engine. This can mean expensive car repairs to remove the nest, fix chewed-up wires, and replace any parts or vehicle insulation that the rodents destroyed when they moved in.
Don’t Put Off Pest Management
Year-round pest management is essential for protecting your home from these and other damaging infestations! Even if you don’t see any signs of pests in your home now, that doesn’t mean they aren’t at work behind the scenes. Give us a call at Advantage Termite & Pest Control, and we’ll come to do a full inspection and treatment of your property to keep your personal property safe and secure. Call us at first sight – We do it right!
