Cleaning Out the Harborage Before Treatment

What Sanitation and HEPA Vacuum Cleanout Is and When It Is the Right Call

Cleanout is the right call when the German cockroach population has outgrown bait. The signs are cockroaches out in daylight, egg cases and droppings in many places, and a musty, oily odor in the kitchen. At that size the population is producing new nymphs faster than bait can run it down, and the egg cases cemented in cracks would keep hatching for weeks.

The technician starts at the harborage: behind and under the refrigerator and stove, inside the cabinet under the sink, along the backs of drawers and in the gaps around the dishwasher. A HEPA vacuum with a crevice tool pulls out live insects, egg cases, shed skins and the buildup of droppings. The bag or canister is sealed and removed from the home.

Sanitation is the homeowner's half of the step, and the treatment depends on it. Grease on the stove hood, crumbs behind the toaster, a damp cabinet floor under a slow drip and cardboard boxes stored in the pantry all feed and shelter cockroaches. We point out what we find and ask you to deal with it. Once the harborage is clean, the liquid application goes into the same cracks and voids, and bait is placed in the spots the liquid cannot reach.

For American and smoky brown cockroaches, the prep is about water. These are large outdoor and drain species that come inside because something is wet: a leaking trap under a sink, a sweating pipe in the crawl space, a clogged gutter over the roofline. We ask you to fix the leaks before treatment, because the general spray inside, under and around the home holds up far better when the water source is gone. Where the damp comes from a crawl space, we can correct that ourselves.

Cleanout does not replace the treatment. It is the first part of a severe German cockroach job, done so the product that follows reaches a smaller, exposed population. Expect a noticeable drop the same day and a further decline over the following week or two.