I’ve turned to the forum for plenty of research, so thought I’d share – a couple close friends of mine are unfortunately dealing with a small bedbug infestation. They decided to hire a dog to see if they really had them, and the company was truly great. Not only did they check out her place of employment (with permission, of course), but he checked out her place, her sister’s, and mine (as they were storing some things in my basement). Joe was knowledgeable, helpful, and flexible – at least he’s made one part of the process painless! They are Spot Certified, at http://www.spotcertified.com/index.html.

Hello all,

We have mice, our neighbors have CATS… I’m allergic to cats. So we are looking for a reliable exterminator.

Has anyone had any experiences with “Green Earth” or Knock Out” pest control?

Comments regarding either company or any personal experiences for getting rid of MICE, would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Brle

All due respect to those observing St. Paddy’s Day, but on this day in March, what I’m observing seems to be the start of the annual parade of the ants! Can’t believe it — I just looked at the cat’s bowls and spied those pesky critters! Mind you, it’s not even officially spring yet! (Yeah, I know, what do the ants care? It’s warm today. Woo hoo!)

At any rate, I’m reminded that last year’s ant invasion was particularly outrageous. Lasted a long, long time and the invaders were not deterred by anything we tried, i.e., constant cleaning, ant traps and sprays.

POR: Does anyone have a really effective ant repellent/destroyer to recommend that won’t also make house pets sick?

TIA

Bedbugs: 101
As landlords, one of our greatest fears has been a tenant getting bedbugs. It was bound to happen eventually, and so it did this last fall. It turned out to NOT be as terrible as our worst nightmares, so I thought it would be helpful to all of you to write up our experience and our recommendations.
Thanksgiving weekend we got the call from our new-ish (2 months) tenants. “We think we have bedbugs.” A quick search turned up THE guy in NYC: Boot-A-Pest, John Furman, 516-481-7378 . He’s referenced several times in this forum, as well as other sites and the venerable NY Times and NY Mag. For $300, he comes to conduct an inspection and make a recommendation. If you go with his service, the $300 is credited to the treatment costs. Great guy, well-run business, 100% honest and respectful and fast.
Boot-A-Pest describes the infestation as very small, and localized to two spots in the apartment. It becomes clear that the tenants did not bring these with them, but likely picked them up at a movie theatre or the kid’s preschool or something. That’s the good news.
The bad news: our tenants have A LOT of stuff in their apartment. Not “Hoarders”-worthy, but a classic case of too much crap in too little space. John tells us that his treatment will not work as long as there is so much stuff in the apartment. They can either move a lot of it to storage, never to return to the apartment, and he’ll treat the space. Or, if that won’t work for them, he refers us to a second company that does a thermal treatment instead of the traditional poison. Cost of John’s traditional treatment for the given space: $1,200 (gulp). Estimate for the thermal treatment: $2,600 (sigh).
We confer with the tenants, and give them their options. We are willing to spend $1,200, which is essentially the highest-end cost of traditional treatment, with the best guy in the City. But because of their situation with the copious amounts of stuff in the apartment, they can either move a lot of their belongings to storage and we provide this treatment, or they don’t, and we will pay $1,200 toward the much-more-costly thermal treatment—they will have to cover the rest. Because they don’t want to part with their stuff, and because they have 2 young children (and are worried about the poison approach), they opt for the thermal treatment.
Enter AAA Superior Pest (a3superior dot com). Also fantastic and professional and quick and honest. They essentially heat the apartment in question to something like 140 degrees for 6 hours, which kills all the bugs and their eggs. Obviously, this is not cheap, and they quote us the $2,600-ish (my memory of the exact number isn’t great; probably self-preservation). We set up the treatment, get an agreement from the tenant to pay the difference (as added rent), and sign the contract. Treatment goes great; follow-up inspection after 30 days shows no bugs; no further evidence as of today, almost 90 days out. Phew.
A few additional things we learned/confirmed through this experience:
1. Some landlord friends have written in a bedbug clause to their leases, stipulating that the tenant is responsible for treatment. I don’t think such a thing would hold in court, but more important, our experience confirms that *we want the tenant to tell us right away if they think they have bedbugs.* This gives us the opportunity to treat it quickly and effectively (if expensively), rather than have the tenant be cheap/slow/otherwise ineffective, which would ultimately just make the situation worse.
2. The apartment in question is one of 3 in our house. In an abundance of caution, the exterminators recommended the other apartments be inspected before treatment and 30 days after. Given the minor infestation in the first apartment, they indicated that it was VERY unlikely that the source was another apartment in the building. They said that there has to be a really major infestation for the bugs to even move to a new place. There were no bugs in the other 2 apartments, as expected. What we learned from this is that our BIGGEST fear is unfounded: “OMG, if one tenant gets bedbugs, they will spread to the other apartments within 32 minutes. All our tenants will move out. It will cost us $10,000,000 to eradicate the bugs. We’ll never find new tenants because we’ll be black –listed. We’ll have to move to New Jersey.”
3. We decided to update everyone in the building that this was going on. This was a difficult decision to make, weighing tenant privacy against the need to stay on top of the situation and inform the others it might affect. We didn’t say which apartment it was, but folks likely figured it out. Everyone seemed grateful and happy for the information, and there were no unintended consequences.
I hope you never need this information~

Our neighbor’s shed and fence appear to have termites. The shed is about 20 feet from our houses, at the end of the garden. The only visible fence damage is right by the shed. The neighbor alerted us to the probable termites, and is going to get them exterminated. Do you guys think we should call an exterminator to do whatever they do to our house just in case? Or, since the termites seem to be only pretty far from the house, wait and see what happens after the neighbor has dealt with the situation? Thank you, as ever!

I just discovered that I have a bedbug problem in my apartment. I don’t think it’s an infestation at this point but I know I can’t leave it up to my own efforts. And needless to say I had a difficult time sleeping last night. I’ve also heard about stories of unscrupulous extermination companies so I thought to ask if anyone could recommend an exterminator?

I have a clothing moth problem. I have been using mothballs diligently but it hasn’t seemed to completely stop the problem.

1) Wondering if people have recommendations for exterminators or other methods of getting rid of them.

2) Anyone specifically used Orkin? Just wondering how the local branches are.

Hi.

We just learnt we have a bee hive in our cornice which needs to be removed before we can have the cornice fixed.

Can anyone recommend someone to do this? Any idea of what the cost might be?

Thanks in advance.

Little panicked here. I live in a coop in Prospect Heights & I think we may have bed bugs. I just found a bug on my son’s bedroom rug. I looked on the DOH website & it looks like it could be one or a spider beetle. He has some bites that could be bbs or mosquitoes. I would like to find out what type of bug this is before we start shelling out the cash. Anybody know where I can get this little guy I caught identified? Who in the area is great at getting rid of there critters without breaking the bank? Thanks.

I have a ten unit building in PS. There is no infestation but a hugh roach is popping up fairly frequently. Two tenants have complained, and one is phobic about it. Threatening to move out if something is not done “immediately”. I see one in the basement sometimes.
Is an exterminator a one time thing or does he have to come on a regular basis?
How much does it cost?
Any recs?