Bug Blog

As a long time provider of quality rodent control, it is with some dismay that we are seeing some rapid changes in this industry.  Changes which do not benefit the consumer.

It used to be that the quality rodent control companies did really good inspections of homes to find all the rodent access points and tried to educate their customers about rodent prevention and rodent exclusion.

Rodent control used to be one of our biggest areas of business.  We made an attempt to solve every rodent problem permanently.  We saw this as a matter of service excellence and of putting our customer’s interests first.

In the last few years, a different aspect of rodent control has become more prevalent:  Crawlspace clean-up.  As of yet, there are no consumer protection laws or industry guidelines about this burgeoning industry and a lot of homeowners are getting scammed.

The truth of it is, very few homeowners need their crawlspaces cleaned.  It is not as important as keeping the rodents out and should only be done after a very thorough exclusion process has been completed.

Rodents can chew on wiring and cause house fires, so keeping rodents out is always a good idea.  Field mice can carry the hanta virus – so exclusion is good for health reasons as well.  But rats do not carry the hanta virus.  There is no evidence that dead rats, rat urine, or rat droppings in your sub area will cause any kind of health effect – regardless of the bogus claims put forth by many of the rodent cleanup companies.

A month after all mice have been eliminated from a home, the hanta virus is no longer active.  So at that point, dead mice, mouse urine, and mouse droppings wold no longer pose a health threat either.

Many of the companies which provide crawlspace cleanup are cleaning up all right, cleaning up your cash.

Most of these companies hire illegal aliens who do not speak English, are not trained in the important aspect of rodent proofing, and are not being instructed on the dangers of working in crawlspaces that are infested with field mice.

During subsequent inspections of the work performed by many of these companies we typically find lots of missed access areas, and rodent exclusion materials that do not work at all in keeping rodents out.  Materials like expanding foam.

These companies are not interested in removing and replacing only the insulation that is soiled but are interested in making the most amount of money the market will bear.  We tried with three different cleanup crews to get estimates on replacing only the soiled insulation in a crawlspace and not one company would give such an estimate.

The result is that we are now seeing customers who are being talked into paying to have multiple crawlspaces cleanups, because the exclusion was never done or never done properly.  It is almost impossible to get a long term warranty from any of these companies unless they are also licensed pest control companies who provide rodent control and you sign up for long time service.

The average crawlspace cleanup job is over $5000.00 There is so much money in crawlspace cleanup and so many companies are pushing it so hard, that it is becoming difficult for companies that don’t push the cleanups to compete.  Almost every week, we lose an average of 10 rodent control keywords that become too  expensive to advertize on due to this over competition.  Just this week I saw 6 keywords that had been under $4.00 per click shoot up past $14.00 per click.

We think it is time for Department of Agriculture to step in and enact some consumer protection laws.

Yes, there should be companies performing this service. Some homes do need to have their insulation replaced and new vapor barriers installed.  But as a matter of ethics and customer concern, we only see maybe a dozen homes every year that actually need some sort of cleanup and for most of those customers it is offered as an option.