March to October

Ant control in Metro Vancouver

The ants on your counter are scouts. The nest is somewhere warm and wet, and it is rarely where you see them.

Visits
1 to 2
Quiet again
7 to 14 days
Worst months
May to August
Root cause
Water in wood
Ants through the year
NoneLowModerateHigh

3-month guarantee

Back inside 3 months of treatment and we return and re-treat for nothing.

  • LicensingFully licensed
  • Guarantee3 months
  • Coverage17 cities

Signs

How you know

  • A single-file trail along the counter, baseboard or hedge
  • Fine sawdust under a windowsill or door frame
  • Winged ants indoors in spring, which means the nest is mature
  • Faint rustling inside a wall or hollow door on a warm evening

Species

What lives here

Carpenter ants
Our biggest structural problem. Large, black, and they chew galleries in wet framing rather than eating it. Rot from a leaking gutter or deck ledger is what let them in.
Pavement ants
Small and dark. They nest under slabs, driveways and patio stones, then come inside for grease and sweets.
Pharaoh ants
Tiny and pale amber. Never spray these. Repellent product splits one colony into five. Bait only.
Moisture ants
Yellow-brown, living in soaked framing and crawlspaces. Finding them tells you as much about your building as about your pests.

Treatment

How we deal with ants

  1. Track the foragers back to the nest. The trail is a symptom, the wet void is the problem.

  2. Non-repellent product on the perimeter and in voids, so workers carry it home instead of scattering.

  3. Bait matched to the species. Carpenter and pharaoh ants take completely different bait.

  4. A written note on the leak, rot or grade issue that made your place attractive, because that is what makes the fix hold.

Prevention

Keeping them out

  • Trim cedar, laurel and wisteria a hand-width clear of siding and roofline
  • Move firewood, bark mulch and yard waste off the foundation
  • Fix the leak first. Gutters, hose bibs, deck ledgers, bathroom fans venting into the attic
  • Keep sugar, honey and pet food in sealed rigid containers

Questions

Ants, asked and answered

Will store-bought spray fix a carpenter ant nest?

Almost never. Aerosol kills the workers you can see, and those are a small share of the colony. Repellent product often pushes the nest deeper into the wall. Someone has to find the nest and treat it at the source.

Do carpenter ants eat my house?

They hollow out galleries to live in. Over years that weakens framing, and it tells you water is getting into that wood.

Get your ant problem named

A certified applicator confirms which species you actually have. Where it is coming from usually turns out to be the more useful half of that answer.

Same-day response · 24/7 emergency

Call (604) 862-1414 Text Book inspection