Facility Maintenance Tips To Keep Pests Out By Patrick T. Copps, MS, BCE Technical Services Manager, Orkin Inc.
During the cold winter months, the most popular seat in the house will likely be the one nearest to the fireplace or heater. Just as people prefer to stay indoors when temperatures drop, so do pests. Rodents, German cockroaches and some occasional insect invaders seek shelter from the elements during the winter, and without proper preparation, they may find their way inside your facility. Once inside, pests can cause structural damage, threaten the integrity of your products and even put the health of your employees and customers at risk.
The best way to keep pests out of your facility is to make sure you don’t offer them an opportunity to venture inside. Pests can enter a building in a variety of ways. In addition to crawling through an open door, they can squeeze through small crevices and gaps that may be present around closed doors and windows, or in exterior siding. In some instances, pests can arrive on or inside shipments or even hitch a ride on an unsuspecting employee’s or customer’s belongings.
To help protect your building from pests, develop a facility maintenance plan that keeps pests away from your building and helps prevent them from entering. Work with your pest management professional to start your efforts today using these tips:
• Tightly close doors and windows. If a pest is able to walk through a door, it will. Put weather stripping on the bottom and sides of all doors to help stop small pests from sneaking in right under the door. If you have service doors that must frequently must remain open, install plastic strip curtains or roll-up screens that create an additional barrier for pests and still provide easy entry for staff and shipments.
• Seal cracks and crevices. Inspect the perimeter of your building and look for any unnecessary cracks and crevices that pests could use as an entry point. Mice can enter a building through an opening only 1.75 centimetres wide, and rats can squeeze through holes as small as 2.5 centimetres. Seal any unnecessary gaps with a mixture of copper mesh and weather-resistant sealant. The copper mesh will help deter rodents from chewing through the sealant.
• Trim landscaping. Pests often find shelter and, in some cases, sustenance in and around your facility’s decorative landscaping. To help prevent pests from living right next to your building, trim vegetation one meter from the exterior walls and consider installing gravel in this vegetative-free strip. Crawling pests will find the gravel strip a rocky obstacle, and rodents often will avoid crossing the barrier because it leaves them defenceless and exposed.
• Inspect incoming shipments. Incoming shipments may include some hitch-hikers that tag along and find their way inside your facility. Inspect all incoming shipments and refuse any damaged or infested products. If shipments arrive in corrugated cardboard boxes, promptly dispose of the boxes, which often serve as a home for cockroaches and other pests.
• Keep it clean. In addition to facility maintenance and inspections, practice good sanitation efforts to dissuade pests. Determine the pest “hot spots” in each structure such as food service areas, laundry facilities, storage rooms and restrooms and pay close attention to the sanitation in those areas.
Keep your employees updated on their roles in the facility maintenance efforts and communicate any changes to the structure, such as alterations to entrances, to your pest management professional. Consider additional facility upgrades in the spring when warm-weather pests such as flies and ants will be out. By regularly updating your pest management efforts and enforcing a strict “no entry” policy for pests, you can discourage pests from calling your facility “home” this winter.
- Patrick Copps is Technical Services Manager for Orkin’s Pacific Division. A Board Certified Entomologist in urban and industrial entomology, Copps has more than 30 years experience in the industry. For more information, e-mail Copps at
or visit www.orkincommercial.com.
