Not Getting Rid Of Ants - Something That Doesn't Work

Welcome to Getting Rid Of Ants. Perhaps oddly, I'm going to start with something that doesn't work when you are trying to get rid of ants.

One solution, which I've seen suggested on several sites on the Internet, suggests that you can get rid of ants by using silicon to seal up all the cracks in the wall, thereby denying the ants entry to the house.

Doesn't work!

I don't believe there are any houses that are possible to seal 100% completely and ants will always find a way in.

If there is just one gap somewhere, the ant scouting parties will find it and make their way in (should they wish to do so - that's a better place to start).

Ants are highly organized. They send out scouting parties and map out routes, before establishing a highway. When they are in this phase, you can see single ants out scouting territory. Once you see this, it's only a matter of days before they establish a highway.

What do you do when you see ant scouts? I'm always a little conflicted. Sometimes I wait until they establish a highway, then kill all of the ants in one go. Other times I kill the ants scouts before they establish the highway.

They'll still establish it at some point but maybe I can keep them in a state of confusion for several days. Maybe they'll give up and go away! Hopefully there'll be an ant scout that returns to HQ with information on a lovely place to live out in the garden, far from that crazy man who tries to kill any ants he sees.

I sound like I'm talking about humans, don't I? Sometimes that's what it seems you're up against. Ants are very intelligent!

How do ants find their way in?

Well, if you have a brick house such as mine, they'll find small holes in the mortar and get into the walls. There are hundreds of such holes for them to chose from. There's no way to block them all.

You can try to create a barrier around the base of your house, either using outdoor surface spray or calling a professional pest control company, but at least in my case this had limited effectiveness.

The professional pest control company got rid of the ants for two weeks, then the ants were back. With the outdoor surface, it only buys me a day or two, before the ants are crawling back over the top of it, onto the walls and finding those small cracks again.

If your house is made of a surface other than brick, you may have more luck with the barrier spray. The pest control guy told me that the pesticide actually soaks into the brick. However, even with other surfaces, ants will find small gaps in the barrier or work out how to cross it (mine seem to hold their bottoms up so they have limited contact with the sprayed area - these are common black ants). Or maybe not so common!

Anyway, the ants don't have much trouble getting into the walls if they want to. Once they're there, the ants can get up into the ceiling and traverse the length of the house. They can come down wherever they want to.

Once again, it's just not possible to seal all the gaps leading into the ceiling. There will be air vent, light fittings which are flush, ceiling fans, etc. The ants will find a way through!

I'm not saying that you shouldn't fill up any gaps where the ants have established a highway, but don't expect this to solve your ant problem. Getting rid of ants is not so easy - they'll just find another way in.