Dealing with ants in the house

[seveneleven]

Kitchen ants.
Tried gorilla tape over their entrances which stops them for 3 or 4 days as they manage to eat through the hardiest tape.
Tried pouring vinegar into the hole an washing the walls with vinegar.
Tried dried chili pepper over the holes.
Tried plaster and caulking the holes.
Tried poison powder which managed to eliminate a large number but not the colony.
Girlfriend says its karma that they keep coming back, I say they were here in the first place, and they are doing the same thing they were doing before. I don't really care if I get eaten by ants in Buddhist hell so I'd like to conquer the colony.
I've read all the websites on how to stop them and still not capable of it.
Any suggestions?
I'm doing an interior painting project including caulking next month for the kitchen and living room, would like to stop the ants during my work.

[hhfarang]

I fought them for 10 years in 4 homes we lived in there and won a few battles but ultimately lost the war.

I suggest you just get used to the fact that in the tropics you will share your home with all manner of insects, vermin, and reptiles (and maybe a few unwanted mammals) with little you can do about it. If you fight it you will go crazy. Ants are the very least of it, there are much worse household pests there.

In my time there we had snakes, frogs, lizards, cockroaches, flys, mosquitoes, spiders, termites, rats and ants inside and outside the house that I did continuous battle with to little avail, so just hope that ants are the worst of it.

[PeteC]

If your house has tubing in the foundation that the exterminators use for termite control, that I've found is the best way to control ants as well. We had a huge ant problem when the pest control company was only servicing the house 3 times a year. I changed that to once a quarter and the ants have disappeared completely. It's been 3-4 years now since I've seen any ant at all in the house.

It's safe to conclude that ants come up through the foundation, not from the odd ant hill you may find in the yard near the house. You have to get any chemical treatment under the house and into the foundation to eliminate them completely, and maintain a cycle of every 3 months to prevent colonies from reestablishing. Pete

[hhfarang]

^ We had monthly (professional) pest control as well as a built in (when the house was constructed) system of spray heads in the crawl space for termites that were used under pressure to soak the ground under the house with poison for termites, ants and other insects every three months and that didn't seem to stop them. Maybe we had hardier insects on the west side of the bay.

[migrant]

We've only been here 3 months so far, but have waged the well fought battle. We are in an old bungalow while we wait to build our house so nothing special on the foundation, etc.

Every morning I walk the outside and spray heartily if I see any ants. I also bought the traps that contain poison that the ants are supposed to carry back and kill the nest (this worked good for me in California with grants poison).

We have definitely decreased the population, and have gone longer periods between sprays, but I know it will continue.

There is no professional pest control here in Bang Saphan so we are on our own.

Good Luck!

[PeteC]

Be careful what chemicals you introduce from abroad. You may create some kind of Thai Godzilla ant that will eat the village!

[migrant]

Be careful what chemicals you introduce from abroad. You may create some kind of Thai Godzilla ant that will eat the village!

Sounds like a description of my son!!

[Arlo]

I have used a large pot of boiling water to take out an ant nest. I would dump the water as best as I could down the holes and then a little while later check on them again and see if they were moving around again. If they were I would do it again. It took a few days of this but they either died off or moved on. These were red ants in the garden and not in the house.

[Big Boy]

I agree with Pete - a professional exterminator did the job for us - worth every Baht. We had a huge infestation - not seen an ant in the house for 3 years.

[V4281051]

Wipe everywhere with vinegar...keeps them away..

[Geko]

Try this you can get in a few places in town. Place the trap on the ants trail, they enter the trap and take the poison granules back into their nest. I have used it a few times with great success.

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[migrant]

Try this you can get in a few places in town. Place the trap on the ants trail, they enter the trap and take the poison granules back into their nest. I have used it a few times with great success.

images.jpg

Yes this is what we used

[seveneleven]

Lots of info here, thanks everyone. I think I'll try some of the ARS ant killers, maybe 4 or 5 of those spread out around the house on normal trails.
For the kitchen routes, I'm not doing any extreme poison but I will have another plan for them. I know their main entrance point so I was planning on gorilla taping it again and dumping poison into a pouch of the gorilla tape and leave it be.
Cheers for all the info!

[crazy88]

We have regular monthly sprays inside and outside. Whatever they use is no problem for humans or pets. PM me for details.

Crazy 88

[Big Boy]

Same with us, and probably 10x more effective than those ARS thingys, which worked very short term for us. Not expensive either - we pay 458 per month (no idea if that's cheap or expensive), but worth every Baht to keep the ants away.