-This is a transcript from Go Gaddis Radio to listen to the episode click here-> https://on.soundcloud.com/NKU7f
Welcome back to Go Gaddis Real Estate Radio right here on AM 920 The Answer. I'm Cleve Gaddis. Thanks for sticking with us during the break in this segment. We've had heat, we've had humidity, we've had lots of rain showers. Do those things bring pests into your yard and potentially into your home? And what would be four or five pests that you don't want
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Northwest Exterminating has provided expert guests for the Go Gaddis Real Estate Radio Show and all the iterations before for years and years and years and I'm proud to recognize that Ethan Venable, who is a regional sales coach at Northwest Exterminating, is with us on today's show. Welcome, sir. Hey, thanks for having me, everybody.
It's good to see you again. Sounds to me like you might have gotten a little promotion since the last time you and I chatted. Is that correct? Because your title's a little different. I sure have. Yeah, I guess it's been several months since we've talked, so moving on up. Good for you. Well, congratulations.
I'm proud of you, man. I absolutely love that. Okay, so, I have a girlfriend. Uh, the girlfriend's name is Tammy. And many of our listeners have heard her before on the radio show. She's from Dallas, Texas. And you'd think as a cool, hip, tough Texas woman that she would not be afraid of bugs. But nothing could be further from the truth.
She doesn't like any bugs. She doesn't like roaches. She doesn't like ants. She doesn't like spiders. She doesn't like anything. And so for me, if I have a one or two lone ant that gets into my house, no problem. I'm gonna stomp them out. I'm gonna stop them. I'm gonna clean up food, whatever. But for her, it is a big deal.
So, I would love to address, if we could, Termites. I'd love to address mosquitos, because I had mosquitos, something terrible in my backyard this year. I'd love to address ants, because I know we've got several different types that get into the homes. One that likes sweet, and one that likes something else.
I'm, I'm just talking here. I'm not a pest control expert. I'd like to talk ticks and fleas as well, as well as roaches. So, what are the most common things, most common bugs that Northwest Exterminating goes out to homes to treat? Forget termites, because I'm sure that's the biggest portion of your business.
So, so that, you know, we're in Georgia. We're in the south. We've got a little bit of everything down here. So, you know, the main things that we treat and we get calls every day. I'm going out every day. Somebody's got ants in the house. Of course, summertime mosquitoes everywhere. Roaches. We've got several different kinds of roaches here in Georgia.
So it's we really have a mixture. down here of what we treat and what we go out for. My third daughter moved into an apartment recently down in the Virginia Highland area. I think I'm saying that that that is the correct area. Um, and, um, on her second or third day, she found that she had some extra people living in the The apartment with her, she had some roaches.
She had roaches on the floor, she had roaches on the counter. And people said to her, Well, welcome to Atlanta, that's just part of the deal. You're going to have roaches in this area. And I said, well, honey, um, Get the apartment to treat, but also get some roach traps and things like that. So, for someone in Stacy's situation, What would you recommend, or what would Northwest Exterminating do if they went out to treat for roaches?
And they were right about that. We're in Georgia. You know, it's, and we always tell people it's a reduction program. We're in Georgia. We're going to have issues. There's always those things that you can do, uh, besides getting a provider to come out and spray to kind of prevent that. Okay. And what are those things?
So you want to get rid of their food source. Number one thing, you know, make sure you clean up a really good. Um, you don't leave any food out, keep everything bagged up, especially in an apartment. Because, you know, they can always come right through the wall. It could be your neighbor that's bringing them in.
You know, you don't even have to. Thank you for mentioning that, because what I said to her was, Stacy, it's probably not your apartment that's attracting the roaches. Absolutely. They're probably, excuse me, coming in from an apartment next door. So is it the food in her apartment they're getting to, or they're getting into, and I'm just assuming they're in the neighbors and not hers.
I think it could be a mixture of both. You know, if you, if the neighbors, it's got a lot of roaches, it's just going to come right through the wall. The big thing, you know, roaches, especially in Georgia, it's the moisture. That's, you know, that's what's bringing them in. So you always see them. You typically always see them around the pipes in the kitchen, in the bathroom.
You know, they're in there for the moisture. So the big thing is to make sure everything, if you have a moisture issue, handle it, any leaks, you know, any rotten wood, uh, but also sealing up those pipes around where they're going in, make sure they're sealed up so they can't go up those pipes. Okay. Make sure there's nothing for them to.
eat. Don't leave out food, but it sounds to me like don't also leave scraps or crumbs or anything like that on the floor because that might attract them as well. So sweep up, clean up, check places where there is water and, and I would assume number one, make sure there's no active leaks or anything there that could possibly be attracting them.
And then number two or number three, seal up around where the pipes go through the cabinets and the walls to keep the roaches from coming in. That is really, really good advice. Now for someone, Ethan, who wanted you to come out and treat roaches. Um, I don't, I don't assume there's any roach lovers in this country that would want to keep the roaches.
Maybe there, maybe there are, but if they wanted you to come out and treat them, but they wanted you to be environmentally friendly, how would you do that compared to just coming out and smoke bombing the place and killing all the roaches? Sure, in Northwest, you know, in the old days of the whole come out, you hit all the baseboards, you fill the house full of pesticides.
At Northwest, and I think a lot of companies are trying to adopt this, is we do something called innovative pest management. So we are figuring out where the issues are, and that's where we're treating. So the first thing when I come in as an inspector, I'm figuring out where they're coming from, and if there's anything that the homeowner or the tenant can do to kind of, you know, reduce that, uh, them from being in the house.
So, you know, come in, say, okay, first thing you need to do is you need to do this and this. Um, and then that's when we, you know, apply the product and then we just go from there. Interesting. And so, is what you put out, I know you say, basically what I heard you say is you put it out sparingly. You only put it in the places where you absolutely, positively need it.
I would assume what you're using today might be more environmentally friendly than what was used 10, 20, 30 years ago, I would guess, right? Absolutely. And Northwest is trying to do all, you know, a big part of our business is all green. Green. Something that is. You know, deriving from from the environment.
So, and so, you know, a lot of people don't want to do that because they're like, I want you to come in and kill everything. Actually, science has proven that it actually works better than just using the, you know, the same chemicals that were used 20 years ago. Really? Interesting. Interesting. Okay, so roaches we've got a plan for.
How about ants? And my prior home, every three or four years, you would get, you know, an ant colony. Uh, somewhere outside and they'd find their way inside and they would just be a trail of them coming up the side of the house and, you know, into and across the floor, down the floorboards and up into a cabinet or something like that and we'd have to, to treat them.
So, what can we do to prevent ants from getting into our house and then, and I'd love to real quickly before we get started, what type of ants? I know you said there's two different types of ants. What types of ants do we have and how do we make sure they don't get in? Oh, yeah, way more than two. Oh, way more than two.
Oh, I'm I must be the one who said two because it's wrong. You know, the big the biggest ones I deal with are, you know, the fire ants, carpenter ants, Argentine ants, we have, you know, we have such a variety and you know, it's You think we don't have them and then sure enough next year we find out we do have a different kind of So the carpenter the carpenter and the fire ants those are a little bigger and then the brazilian or whatever you said Those are a little smaller.
They are it's it's hard to tell to the untrained eye What it is a lot of times I have to take a picture and zoom in to be able to tell Oh, you know and that helps us figure out, you know what they're coming in for. It's like you were saying earlier Some like, you know, the proteins, some like the sugars, so we got to figure out what, you know, product we're going to use and how to deal with them.
But as far as keeping them away from the house, you want to make it as hard as possible for them to get in. So, like we were talking about before with roaches, you want to make sure everything's sealed up. Make sure you don't have any food laying out, make sure they have no reason to come in the house.
But you know, sometimes that's not going to help. You know, they're going to have those little guys going out there trying to explore to find things to take back. So they're going to get in the house one way or another. So a big thing is to keep, you know, keep the brush off the house, no vegetation. I know I had ants in my house recently.
I couldn't figure out where they're coming from. Come to find out they were carpenter ants, and it was a railroad tie that was way back on my property that was rotted out, and they had a huge colony in there. They were coming all the way from the back of my property all the way to the house. So sometimes it's not even right there by the house.
Wow. Wow, man, you gotta you gotta be diligent in order to find where they're coming from. Okay, if someone wanted to reach you Ethan to schedule an inspection or ask you a question. How would they do that? Sure, they can call me on my cell phone. Number is 3 9 3 80 53 Also, you know, just google northwest exterminating.
We've got branches all over the greater atlanta area all over the southeast So somebody can put you in touch with somebody who can come out and take a look. Totally We've you've just joined us. Um cleve gaddis host of the show. I'm on with ethan Venable who is with Northwest Exterminating. We're talking all things pest control.
We've talked to ants and roaches real quickly. We've only got about a minute and a half left in the segment. Let's talk quickly about mosquitoes, termites, fleas, not teas, fleas and ticks. Sure. So I guess we'll just jump into termites. Termites the moisture, you know, that's what that's what's bringing them in.
Okay. You don't want earth to wood contact You want to make it hard for them to get in? Okay, so, you know, it's getting to be cold. So we have stacks of wood out Don't put that wood up against your house don't or anywhere near the house. Got it. Got it Put it out there where the carpenter ants can get it.
That's right We want to make it hard for them to get indoors. All right. All right mosquitoes. Yep You know, it's puddles of water. So you don't want to leave, you know, make sure all your drainage ditches everything's clear of debris You don't want any moisture issues around your property. Got it. Don't leave wheelbarrows pulled up, you know.
Um, so you want to make sure they have nowhere because this is a breeding ground. Perfect. And then fleas and ticks, I would assume that's really all about treating your dog, treating your pets. That's right. The number one thing I tell people is make sure that you have, you know, medication for your animals.
Yep. Keep the brush back from the house, lay it out in the tall grass, make sure that's cut, make sure you're vacuuming regularly. So if they do bring them in, you handle it before it gets to be a real big issue. Love it. Ethan, thank you so much. You're always a wealth of information. I hope you'll come back sometime real soon.
We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to talk about a day in the life of a REALTOR And I'm going to share a story that you might enjoy from my career as a REALTOR Stick with us. We'll be back.