House Centipede Control for Homes

House Centipede Control

What is the yellowish, many legged thing that shot across the bathroom floor faster than anything that size should move? That was a house centipede. It is about an inch to an inch and a half long, yellowish gray with three dark stripes down the back, and it carries fifteen pairs of very long, banded legs that give it the look of a moving fringe. It is among the fastest arthropods you will see indoors, and it startles people out of all proportion to what it can do.

House centipedes are predators, and that is the useful thing to know about them. They eat silverfish, cockroach nymphs, carpet beetle larvae, spiders, ants, flies and other small insects, hunting at night and resting by day in cracks, drains, under sinks and in damp corners of basements, crawl spaces and bathrooms. Unlike most centipedes, this species lives its whole life indoors and can be found year round. It needs humidity, because it dries out quickly, and it needs prey.

So a house centipede is a message with two parts. There is enough moisture in the house for it to live, and there are enough other insects for it to eat. One centipede in a basement means little. Regular sightings mean the conditions that support a food chain are present, and the insects it is eating are the ones worth asking about.

They are not a concern to people. A house centipede can bite if handled, and the bite is comparable to a mild bee sting, but they run rather than confront and bites are very rare. They do not damage the house, food or belongings, and they do not carry disease. Most people still do not want them in the bathroom, which is fair, and that is where we come in.

Our approach treats the cause. The inspection follows the moisture and the prey: the crawl space, the basement, under sinks, floor drains, bathrooms, and wherever silverfish, camel crickets or other small insects are established. The technician treats the harborage and the entry points and applies a perimeter treatment, which lowers both the centipedes and the insects that were feeding them. Because we do the crawl space and moisture work as well, we can tell you when the honest fix is a drier house.

Reducing humidity is what changes the picture over the long term. Fixing leaks, running exhaust fans, drying the crawl space and sealing gaps at the foundation remove both the water and the prey that house centipedes need. House centipede coverage is part of the pest prevention program, and the population is held at the lowest practical level.