Does your Dana Bay home really need fumigating?

Most homes in Dana Bay never need a gas fumigation. If your problem is ants, cockroaches or fleas, a normal treatment sorts it out while you carry on living in the house. Fumigation is for insects hidden inside something, like grubs in a piece of furniture or weevils deep in sacks of feed, where no spray can reach. If that's what you've got, it works very well, but there are rules you need to know about before booking.

"Fumigation" means two different things

People often use the word for any pest treatment. In our trade it means something specific: sealing a space or an item and filling it with a registered fumigant gas, such as phosphine, that gets into every crack and kills insects at every stage of life, eggs included. A spray leaves a residue on surfaces. A fumigant goes right through the stock or the timber and then airs out.

The practical difference for you is big. With a spray, you stay at home. With a gas fumigation, the sealed area must be empty of people and pets and must stay closed until we've ventilated it and cleared it as safe.

When a Dana Bay household might need it

• Wood borer in furniture. Small round holes in a cabinet, chair or wooden chest, with fine powder underneath, mean beetles are living in the wood. Older pieces brought along from a previous home are the usual suspects.
• Infested stored goods. A garage store of bulk dog food, birdseed or flour with weevils or moths all the way through it.
• Household goods around a move. Boxes, wooden items or stored goods you want to be sure are clean before they go into the house.
• A storeroom or outbuilding where stored product insects have spread well beyond a single bag.

We also fumigate warehouses and commercial stock, so if your business has the same problem on a bigger scale, see fumigation in Mossel Bay.

What happens, step by step

1. We look first. We confirm what the insect is and whether it's still active. Old borer holes with no fresh powder may not need treatment at all.
2. We decide what to seal. Often it's a single item or a stack covered with gas-proof sheeting in a garage, rather than a whole room.
3. We seal and apply the fumigant. Gaps, vents and doors are closed off, and the fumigant is applied by a trained, registered operator.
4. The area stays sealed and empty. The exposure time is set by the product label and is usually a matter of days, not hours. Nobody, pets included, goes into the sealed area during that time.
5. We ventilate and clear it. Only once we've aired the space and confirmed it's safe do you go back in.

You'll get the dates in advance, along with what needs to come out of the area and what can stay.

The mistake we see most

Treating the symptoms in the pantry while the source sits in the garage. People throw out an infested packet of flour, wipe the shelf and feel the job is done. Two weeks later the moths are back, because the real colony is in a half-used bag of pet food or birdseed on the garage floor. Before you think about fumigating anything, check every dry food you keep in bulk.

Keeping it from starting again

• Decant bulk pet food, birdseed and flour into sealed hard containers rather than leaving them in their sacks.
• Keep stored food off the garage floor, where it's easy to forget and stays cool and damp in the coastal air.
• Look over second-hand or inherited wooden furniture before it comes inside. Fresh powder under a piece is a sign to have it checked.
• Use older stock first so nothing sits at the back for months.

How much will it cost?

Fumigation is priced on what's being treated and how easily it can be sealed. One borer-infested cabinet under sheeting is a small job. A full storeroom, a garage of household goods or commercial stock takes more fumigant, more sealing and more time. Sometimes the honest answer is that you don't need fumigation at all: a few infested packets can simply be thrown away and the shelves cleaned and treated. We'll come and look, tell you which it is, and give you a free quote.

We're SAPCA registered and have been fumigating homes, stores and warehouses across the Garden Route for more than 25 years. For other pests in the suburb, see pest control in Dana Bay, or read about fumigation in George. To talk it through, call us on 044 012 5011.