PCT On The Road: Residential Pest Management the Focus of Whitmire Micro-Gen Seminars

CHICAGO — Just as no two pests are alike, no two homes are alike. This ever-present circumstance presents unique challenges to pest management professionals involved in residential pest control.

To help pest management professionals gain better results with their residential programs, Whitmire Micro-Gen is offering a series of one-day seminars featuring leading industry speaker and noted entomologist Jeffrey Tucker.

As part of his presentation, Tucker outlined some of the obstacles presented by today’s homes, many of which were constructed by homebuilders more interested in aesthetics than functionality. For example, homebuilders might choose eye-pleasing features without taking into account a region’s climate and environment. These types of decisions often have resulted in homes with structural anomalies conducive to pest problems.

For example, the energy crisis of the 1970s made many experts predict that homes would be built smaller in the future. However, the exact opposite has happened. More two-story homes are built today than in previous years.

The pest control industry also has adapted its strategies, offering services to control a wide variety of pests and innovative packages. For example, from the 1950s to the 1970s, the standard service offerings were rodents, ants and silverfish and the service frequency was generally once a month. Contrast that to today, where pest management professionals treat for just about every type of pest imaginable, offering programs with service frequencies ranging from monthly to quarterly to even once-a-year.

While residential programs offered by today’s pest control operators may differ, they all have the same goals in mind, Tucker said.

• Efficiency
• Achieving maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense. (In other words, programs that take into consideration scheduling, time required to perform the service and ease of service performance.)
• Customer satisfaction
• Technologically correct or appropriate
• Reduced impact

To help achieve these goals, Tucker recommends pest management professionals develop residential programs focusing on inspections and targeted pesticide applications. Tucker said pest management professionals can maximize their time and effectiveness by understanding the three treatment zones in a residential structure: primary, secondary and tertiary.

Primary zones 

• Exterior perimeter – the source of most problems
• Kitchen – the area with the highest concentration of resources
• Bathroom – the area with the second highest concentration of resources

Secondary zones

• Utility/laundry
• Basement
• Attic
• Garage

Tertiary zones

• Bedroom
• Family room
• Dining room
• Living room

Tucker recommends pest management professionals spend the majority of their time inspecting and treating the primary zones, especially the exterior perimeter, noting that almost 95 percent of all residential pest problems originate outdoors. Perimeter pest control focuses on source reduction rather than symptom treatment, and also results in less pesticide use indoors. Since this type of treatment is made outside the house, it can be done so without the homeowner being present, making scheduling and servicing accounts easier.

Within all of the zones, there is both the habitat and micro-habitat. The habitat is the area in which an insect normally lives, while the micro-habitat is the specific location within a habitat where an insect can usually be found and where pesticides should be targeted. Micro-habitats include areas such as weep holes and Tucker urged pest management professionals to concentrate their efforts on these areas to get the best results from their products and to reduce pesticide usage

Dates and locations for the remaining Whitmire Micro-Gen Residential Pest Management Seminars, include:

April 15 - Boston, MA
April 16 - New Rochelle, NY
May 6 - Dallas, TX
May 7 - Houston, TX
May 13 - Riverside, CA
May 14 - Sacramento, CA
May 15 - San Carlos, CA

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