How to Protect Your Home From Mosquitoes

Mosquitoes can be horrible during the summer. You go outside and come back with arms or legs full of bites. Staying inside isn’t much better — you see them flying around your home, and you wake up each morning with bug bites. What can you do? You might be tempted to look up “pest control near me” or “Mosquito control in Springfield, MO.” Before you do that, you can do some things around your home.

Outside

Standing Water

Take a walk around your place. Do you see areas where rainfall or melted snow has left standing water? That is a prime spot for mosquitoes to lay their eggs. Get rid of that standing water. You can find the water in places like buckets, tires, pools, planters, toys, birdbaths, trash containers, and flowerpot saucers. Basically, if there’s water, the mosquitoes will go there.

Look at water storage containers and make sure that they are tightly covered. This includes cisterns, buckets, and rain barrels. If you do this, the mosquitoes will be forced to go elsewhere to lay their eggs. If you have containers that don’t have any kind of covering, like a lid, then you can get wire mesh. Make sure that the holes are smaller than an adult mosquito.

Do you have trees? They have holes that can collect water. Fill up those holes. Make sure you fill any cracks or gaps in your septic tank, and cover any open vents or plumbing pipes by using the same wire mesh that you did with the covers.

Mosquito Larvae

There may be times when you find that some mosquitoes went ahead and laid eggs that have hatched. You can use larvicide to kill them — but be sure that the water isn’t going to be used for drinking by anyone, either people or pets.

Outdoor Mosquitoes

If you want to be able to enjoy the outdoors without having to slather on insect repellent, you can use outdoor adult insecticide to get rid of adult mosquitoes — just find where they like to rest.

Inside the Home

Securing the Inside

Now that you’ve taken care of the outside, you want to make sure that you do the same for the inside. It’s time to do an inspection and see if there are any weak areas that a mosquito can exploit.

The first thing you can do is get window and door screens. This mesh will keep mosquitoes out. Make sure that you close those doors and windows — otherwise the mosquitoes will take it as a sign that you’re welcoming them in. Don’t leave anything propped open, either.

Turn on your air conditioning. That will keep the air too cool for them to enjoy flying around.

Maintaining Your Home

Do you have things inside that can also have standing water? Mosquitoes love to go to flowerpots or vases, for example. Empty those out once a week and scrub them. Then fill them with fresh water. Check your sink, your shower, laundry room, or other places that can be dark and humid. Check under furniture, too.

The mosquitoes may have breached your outer perimeter defenses and made their way into your home. There’s no need to panic, though. You can use an indoor insecticide — though you should ventilate your home by opening the windows, but not the screens.

If all else fails and you’re still dealing with mosquitoes, then you should have a professional come in. You want to avoid these dangerous pests. But you can truly say that you exhausted every option. Then you can watch them do their work and follow their directions to stay mosquito-free.