How much of a problem are ants in the home? If it makes a difference we are in Nova Scotia. How do you deal with them? Do people deal with them only themselves or do you use pest controllers who spray around the property?
Any advice would be great!

How many?

If it's not too many, there are little things that can be bought from Canadian Tire. Peel something off and just put them on the floor where you can see ants. It did the trick for us.

Carpenter ants may be a problem for your home structurally. They tunnel through the wood and weaken the frame.

Just a few appearing now and then though I wouldn't think is indicative of a problem. We perhaps come across one every other day scuttling across the floor. Chances are they just happen on in from outside.

Ooh yes. We had those in the woodwork behind a shower wall a few years ago.

Luckily my OH is a light sleeper and heard them feasting at night.

Ever since then I've taken her seriously.

Apparently, the rustling sound from behind the walls is the main indicator of them eating your house.

We had a problem at our lake property, so we called the pest control people as the lake is a good half hour from town the pest people didn't want to come out to spray, so he told us what to buy. Miathalon is the stuff to use and is available from UFA. Costs about $15 for a bottle that you then spray around the base of the house. It's also good for mozzies, woodlice and every other creepy crawly you have never heard of.

Isn't that where dbd lives?

We are in NS and have tons of ants scuttling around outside - thankfully I have not seen any inside...yet. I use Home Defense - which you can get from Home Depot/Kent. Just spray around the perimiter of your house and it usually does the job.

When we had work done to the house we found that carpenter ants had chowed down on a few parts so I am much more vigilent now about stopping them getting anywhere near!

Hi

Not sure about Canadian Ants as we have not got to BC yet.

In the UK we use things such as White Vinegar sprayed over the areas or try Peppermint Essential oil watered down and spray that.

The good thing about these items is that A: They will not kill you or the kids
B: They are much cheaper and effective C: Obtainable almost anywhere

Good Luck

Thanks - will try all these ideas! Every few weeks we seem to find a new mini invasion of ants somewhere in the house - more than a few, but I've not tried counting them. I wondered if it might be because our house was relatively unoccupied for many months before we bought it.

Every year we get ants in the house from a different entry point. This year I patrolled the perimeter, dumping ant powder around their favourite entry points - haven't seen any inside yet.

For an inexpensive but effective killer try a mixture of 50% icing sugar and 50% Borax washing powder. You can buy that at the supermarket. It's in a green box in the detergent section. It works for me. I've used it for years. The ants love the icing sugar and eat the borax as well. That's how it works !!

We have dumped about three boxes of borax and sugar around the lake house to no effect, hence using the proffessional stuff - we'll see how effective the poisen is when we go out again at the weekend.

I have had troubles with ants every year since arriving at my humble abode tried many different methods yet to find one that works!

The trouble I have is I may kill one colony sucessfully but there are about 10 of them in my yard and rarely can I get all of them!

Yeah we have more than one coloney too. As we're trying to sell the house, it doesn't look very good seeing piles of and dirt everywhere. There is no evidence of ants inside, just the odd one that you would normaly get. There seems to me far more ants outside this year, hence the call to pest control and the solution I mentioned above.