Ants In My Cavity Wall

It appears I spoke too soon when I mentioned in my previous ants in the garden blog that I don’t have ants in my home! Murphy’s law isn’t it that I now have ants crawling on the carpet just inside of my front door and in my living room. So, I now have my first official home pest problem!

Ants to me are a real nuisance pest… mainly because of the sheer number of them. You never just see one lonely ant on its own, do you?  There is usually a whole army of them (did you know there is actually an ant called Army Ant?). Although the most common species of ant, the Black Ant, is not thought to carry diseases, it still concerns me to find them in my home, you just never know where they have been before.

My house was built in the late 1940′s and annoyingly the pipes in the downstairs rooms run outside of the walls and where they meet a wall there is a gap to allow the pipes to fit through. This appears to be the ideal entry point for ants into my home! And so we think there is an ant nest in our wall cavity.

When the temperatures dropped outside a few weeks ago (who would think we are supposed to be enjoying spring weather in May!) we put the heating back on, so we thought perhaps this was encouraging the ants to come in. Then I was told that other reasons are because ants like exploring (why can’t they explore in someone else’s house?) or because they are looking for food. Well thankfully they have a very long way to go to get to our kitchen! Plus it is all a bit embarrassing, especially when I had friends over the other night and I had to mention about the ants. It made it sound as if my house was dirty, which I promise you it isn’t!!

It seems the best solution is to block the holes up. This isn’t a particularly easy thing to do but at least our current ant problem is finally motivating us to look into the cost of relocating the pipes entirely behind the wall. Alternatively, I was recommended to try an ant gel designed specifically for indoor use. Apart from this, just knowing the basics of how to get rid of ants is also useful, such as don’t leave any food lying about, including crumbs!

Let’s see how things develop! I have a feeling that our vacuum cleaner will get a lot of use!