Ant Control in Saddle Brook, NJ

Carpenter ant exterminator in Saddle Brook

Carpenter ants are the ant that actually costs Saddle Brook homeowners money. Many of the town's houses are mid-century capes, ranches and split-levels with mature trees, wood decks, aluminum or wood-trimmed windows and attached garages. Every one of those is a place where wood gets wet and stays wet — and wet wood is exactly what carpenter ants look for.

A colony usually begins outdoors, in a stump, a rotting fence post, a hollow limb or a stack of firewood. As it grows, workers forage inside your house at night, and the colony can set up satellite nests in the structure itself. The places we find them most often:

• Window sills and door frames where caulk has failed and rain soaks in.
• Roof edges and soffits under gutters that overflow.
• Bathroom and kitchen walls with a slow leak from a tub, shower or dishwasher line.
• Decks, porches and sheds, especially where wood touches soil or stays shaded.
• Homes near the Saddle River and its park, where damp, wooded edges keep colonies close to houses.

Carpenter ant control works when the nest is found and treated directly — in the wall void, door frame or deck — and the outdoor parent colony is dealt with too. We also point out the moisture that drew them in, because if the wood stays wet, a new colony will move in later.

What to do (and skip) before we arrive

A few simple steps help a lot, and a couple of common habits make ants harder to get rid of.

Do:

• Wipe up trails with soapy water so they lose their scent path.
• Put sugar, cereal, pet food and fruit in sealed containers.
• Fix dripping faucets and empty standing water under plants.
• Snap a photo of the ant and note where you see the most.

Skip:

• Spraying store aerosols along the trail. It kills the scouts, not the queens, and can split small-ant colonies into more nests. More on that in does ant spray work?
• Drilling or tearing open a wall to look for carpenter ants. Let us find the nest first.