Peskies Pest Control Birmingham Alabama Podcast

About Peskies Pest Control Birmingham Alabama Podcast

Our motto at Peskies Pest Control Is 100% Guarenteed Or You Don’t Pay a Penny for pest problems in Birmingham Alabama! Monthly discussions on how to have a pest free home with pest expert, Michael Wienecke how to

Publisher

Peskies Pest Control Birmingham Alabama Podcast

Category

leisure · science · science

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

30 Nov 2023

Latest episode

7 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

36 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   7 Oct 2026

   Don’t Burn the House Down: A Professional Guide to Bed Bugs

   In this episode of the Peskies Pest Control Podcast (https://peskiespestcontrol.com/category/podcast/), hosts Michael Wienecke and Travis McGowin broadcast on-location right outside a residential home in Montgomery, Alabama, where a full-house thermal remediation is underway. From the spike in bed bug infestations following peak travel seasons to the science behind using a 500,000+ BTU propane heater to destroy pests and their eggs in a single day, Michael and Travis break down why heat treatment is the ultimate “one and done” solution. Tune in as they discuss practical travel inspection tips, dismantle the stigma surrounding pest infestations, and share a few hilarious past mishaps involving fire departments and unexpected flea encounters! Like us on Facebook! Podcast Transcript: Michael Wienecke: Travis, I feel like bed bugs are on the rise. I feel like we’ve done so many bed bug jobs. I’m losing count. Travis McGowin: Um, things are heating up. See what I did there? Michael Wienecke: Heating up! I like that. Yes. Just in case anybody’s listening, we do heat treatments, so that’s why I said that. Travis McGowin: No pun intended. No pun intended, like I said. But yes, I would say over the last, what, two or three weeks, we’ve done four or five now. Michael Wienecke: Yeah, and I think it’s due to a lot more people traveling. I just think people are traveling more. Travis McGowin: Well, and I think you’re going to only see more of an increase in that simply because the holidays are coming up—October, November, December. Peak travel season, people going visiting with their family. You know, the potential of someone bringing something into your house as they come in to visit, or even family members—you know, some families like to take a big family trip for the holidays. Maybe they go, you know, to the mountains or whatever and they stay in a big cabin or something together. Whatever that looks like for their family, there’s definitely a risk that these bugs can travel. Unbeknownst to them, and then of course, when they realize it, a lot of times it’s just too late. Michael Wienecke: Oh, 100%. I mean, by the time you get them, what, I’d say a month to three months is when they start really showing themselves. Travis McGowin: Yeah, absolutely. And depending upon what size the bed bug was, what life stage the bed bug was prior to you, you know, bringing it home with you. And for those that don’t know, we’re actually sitting outside of a house right now while we speak that we’re currently doing a heat treatment for. And I think it’s a great place to talk about, because earlier on this morning before we got started, we were interviewing and talking with the owner of the house. And, you know, we asked some normal questions that we ask most clients, which is, “Any idea how you got them? Do you travel?” And that’s the first thing that she said was, “Oh, we travel all the time.” Michael Wienecke: Yeah, yeah. And the consultation’s so important. I mean, we talk about this in every aspect of pest control, but asking those questions, “Hey, when’s the last time you went out of town? When’s the last time somebody came over?” We’ve had somebody bring bed bugs because their mother-in-law came and stayed for a month. So, unfortunately, unwelcomed guests on both sides can be, can not be great for your home. Travis McGowin: Absolutely. So, you know, there’s a lot of people who for work or for family, they travel all the time. They have to stay in hotels, they have to stay in Airbnbs or rental properties in general, and they find themselves, you know, at risk—or I would at least say at higher risk than your average everyday human being who’s a homebody. So, let’s discuss a little bit—we’ll talk for a minute here in just a second about what it is we’re doing with this house and how we’re moving the heat in and what it’s doing. But what are some ways that you can mitigate or potentially mitigate this from even being a problem in your own house, especially if you find yourself where you don’t have a choice, you have to travel, you have to move abroad and stay at random places? Michael Wienecke: Yeah, I’ll tell you what I do. So when I go to a hotel or if I’m out of town or something like that, I hang all my luggage up. Some people put it in the bathtub; that’s also a really good way to, you know, if you’re that worried about it. But I hang everything up, I try to put everything in a hanger in the closet. I do an inspection as well, so looking through cracks and crevices—just a quick inspection of the bed frame, behind the headboard. Doesn’t take that long, about five minutes. If you’re that worried about it, though, I would—if you travel a lot, I would carry, I don’t know the scientific term, but bed bug cups. They go up under the bed frame, and they’ll catch the bed bugs so you’d know right then and there. And then you could just talk to the hotel staff, and I think you’d have a free stay for however long you want. Travis McGowin: You would definitely be likely relocated to a different room, for sure. But yes, some due diligence when you first arrive at this property—there again, whether it’s a rental house, whether it’s a hotel, whatever it is. A little bit of due diligence, just a few minutes of giving a good inspection around, like you said, the headboard, the mattress. Another really typical hotspot for bed bugs is if you have a window near the bed that has curtains. Looking in those curtains behind them, and especially up towards the top of the curtain where it attaches to a curtain rod above the window. Those are some hotspots that I typically find bed bugs in when I’m doing inspections. So giving it that good look-over can save you lots of money, lots of pain and frustration in the long run, and definitely will ease your mind, for sure. Michael Wienecke: Well, and a lot of times it’s not even a bed bug that I’ll see; I’ll see a cast skin. And if I’m in a hotel or I’m somewhere and I see a cast skin, that’s a confirmed bed bug as far as I’m concerned. Travis McGowin: Oh, well, I mean, it had to get there somehow or another. And of course, the only way a cast skin comes is from it being shed from a live bed bug. It would be unlikely for a cast skin to end up behind a bed in a hotel being brought by someone’s luggage or something like that; it would just be very unlikely to happen. So, definitely worth doing the due diligence, and I like your suggestion about hanging things up in the closet. At a minimum, use the luggage rack. Even if you’re not in a position where you can hang stuff up, get that stuff up off the ground. Don’t put your luggage on the bed; don’t put your luggage maybe on top of the dresser or things like that. I would keep my luggage towards more towards that closet, hang it or put it on the luggage rack, and that’ll save you in most cases, too, I would say, unless it was just an extreme infestation where they were in the closet. That would be unlikely, I would say, especially in a hotel. Michael Wienecke: We’ve seen it. Travis McGowin: We have, but— Michael Wienecke: But it’s a really—I mean, you got dead bed bugs and live bed bugs in the top ceiling cracks and crevices of your house by then, so. Travis McGowin: Absolutely. So, we’re here in Montgomery this morning. Got here around 7:30 this morning, met with the client that owns the property. And of course, we had the interview, like we said a few minutes ago. She said that they travel a lot, they also host a lot of people in, whether that’s family or friends. So they’re not exactly 100% sure where they got the bed bugs. But we can talk about for a minute the setup a little bit and give people a little bit of an idea of what the methodology is, because we’re doing the whole house. Michael Wienecke: Yes, we’re doing the whole house. I want to go into the consultation a little bit. So this lady was ready to burn her home down! She said— Travis McGowin: And I quote! Michael Wienecke: “I will burn it down if we can’t get rid of these.” So that’s one thing that’s so great about the heat and, again, why we chose it, is because you can be back in your home the very next day, where with these other treatments, you have to come, inspect, treat again, and you have to cut off that life cycle, where we are destroying that life cycle all in one 130–140-degree— Travis McGowin: Absolutely. And anyone who’s listened to any of our content previously knows, and I say it a lot, but there’s no chemical that can penetrate the egg of an insect. Michael Wienecke: I thought you were going to say “an ounce of prevention is a pound of cure.” Travis McGowin: You’re going to butcher it every time. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” That goes back to making sure that where you’re staying doesn’t have bed bugs or that you’re putting your luggage where you can’t bring them back. But there’s no chemical that can penetrate the egg of an insect—we’ll specifically say bed bugs because that’s where we’re at right now—but I mean, that goes for cockroaches, fleas, whatever lays their young in an egg. So those chemical treatments historically are going to take longer because you’re killing off life cycles of adult, nymphal stages, and then you’re having to essentially wait until these eggs hatch before you can ever touch them again. So you’re really just prolonging this life cycle development that you’re trying to mitigate, and it can take sometimes months before you can ever get rid of them. Michael Wienecke: Well, and I’m glad you brought that up. So let me—let’s talk about heat for a second, too, because obviously that’s what we do. Not all heaters are the same! Travis McGowin: Absolutely. Space heaters from Walmart or a department store are not the same as what we’re using today. Michael Wienecke: I’ll never forget it when I walked into a nursing home that was infested with bed bugs, and they showed me their heating unit, and it had caught fire several times. And we walked away from that one. But again, not all heaters are the same. I believe you have some oil-heated heaters, I think you have some propane-heated heaters, and then I think you have some gas ones. We use propane, 500,000 BTUs. It cooks them pretty quick. Travis McGowin: Absolutely. So we have—and if you go on our website or look on YouTube, we’ve got several videos on it, and you can actually see the system that we use. But essentially, it’s a big barrel turned over on its side with a large fan unit that forces air through it, and then of course it has a very large burner on the inside that does shoot flames. We have two large 100-pound propane tanks that we usually hook to this and draw from during the whole treatment. And it forces air across that burner—and I mean, I’m looking at our temperature right now coming out of the barrel of the heater is 250 degrees. It was 280 earlier when we were preheating and getting things up to temp. And she’ll go even higher than that. Of course, we don’t have any desire to burn or damage things. Michael Wienecke: I don’t know how high it’ll go, and I don’t want to find out. Travis McGowin: I don’t think we want to test that! But I know that the adjustment knob for the output of the heater—I’ve never turned it all the way up and don’t plan on it, because we’re not here to be destructive, of course; we’re here to just kill bugs. But I mean, right now the barrel temperature says 253 degrees on the nose. Now, of course, we’re running ductwork into the house, so there’s going to be some heat loss. So, you know, if you’re running 250 degrees out of the barrel, where it comes into the house, I mean, you might be looking at 190 coming out of the ductwork. But tell us a little more about the efficiency of this, from how we make this more efficient and maintain temperatures. Michael Wienecke: So the biggest way is just going to be, obviously, capping off all the cracks and crevices. Depending on the house—this one we were able to do it—but we’re recirculating through. We’re pumping heat through the right-hand side of the house through the window, and then we’re recirculating all the way on the left-hand side of the house, clear across the other side of the home, and pulling that heat. So we’re reusing our heat, and it’s kind of saving us on propane. Not only that, it’s also able to control that heat on a constant source. So it’s more of like a convection oven, if you will. Travis McGowin: Absolutely. Recirculating is more efficient from a propane usage standpoint, but from also maintaining that temperature in the house. If we did not recirculate this heated air through the structure—and Michael and I have seen this firsthand, which is why I would say 99% of the time we’re going to recirculate unless it’s just absolutely not an option—what happens is that fan that’s inside the barrel of that heater forces air into the structure and creates positive pressure. So if you didn’t pull the heat out of there recirculating, then what would happen is that it would force its way out of some gap or crack or crevice, and you would, for one, push heat out of the structure instead of pulling it through our ductwork and recirculating. And it’s just not going to heat as efficiently. If you’re pulling, let’s say, it’s 85 degrees outside and you’re pulling 85-degree air into this heater, well, the heater’s having to work harder to heat the air. You’re forcing it into the structure, it’s blowing back out because it’s positive pressure, and then you’re using more propane as well. It’s just not efficient. So we want the house to heat as efficiently as possible, and it’s actually, you know, we’ve been cooking now for, let’s see, it’s 11:00, so what, two and a half, three hours now? Michael Wienecke: We’ve been cooking. Yeah, so a good thing to bring up there, too, is you can’t just come in here and heat the house up to 300 degrees all in one setting. It has to be a very slow—and I’m emphasizing on 300 degrees; obviously, we’re not going that high—but we can’t just push all this heat in in one setting. It has to be a very slow, methodical way that we set up our fans. We have a great YouTube video on that, but we set up our fans, and we’re trying to create—is it a Venturi effect? Travis McGowin: Vortex. Michael Wienecke: Vortex, yeah. Travis McGowin: I guess it’s similar, but Venturi usually refers to water. Michael Wienecke: With water, yeah, yeah. Bringing my firefighter knowledge in as well. But yeah, so we want a vortex. We want every room to kind of swirl and create almost like a tornado of heat. That’s going to be the best way to get rid of these guys. Travis McGowin: Yeah, absolutely. And so think of it, with the holidays coming, we’ll use the reference of a Thanksgiving turkey. So if you have a turkey that you have thawed out and you’re ready to cook it, and you put it in an oven, and let’s just say you, for some crazy reason, have that oven at 450 degrees, and you stick this turkey that’s what, let’s just say 50 degrees by the time you put it in the oven—you’ve thawed it out and you’ve let it sit to try to get closer to room temperature—but you put it in at such a high temperature, you’re going to cook the outside well before the inside’s done. And so we try to look at it like that. I mean, you have all the contents in the house: you have beds and mattresses and box springs and headboards, you have couches and chairs and all of these different things. Plus, you’ve also got the floor, the walls, the ceiling— Michael Wienecke: Wine bottles! Travis McGowin: Wine bottles, yes, which are prone to leak when they get hot. Or explode. Yeah, anything pressurized. But you’ve got all of these things slowly absorbing the heat that you’re putting into the structure, and you want it to absorb. You don’t want to cook the outside of a couch, but the inside never gets hot enough. So you’ve got to really circulate the heat, you’ve got to start it at a decent temperature, you don’t want to start it too high. You want everywhere that these bed bugs could potentially go to hide to be hot. You don’t want them to be able to escape that heat anywhere. And eventually, you know, I would say at 150, 160 degrees in the house, I mean, it’s almost instant kill on any surface that they touch. Michael Wienecke: Well, and something else I’ll say that’s kind of a bonus for this is not only are we killing bed bugs, but we’re getting rid of any odor that’s in this house. If you smoked in the house, if a dog used the bathroom for a couple years in the house, it can get that odor out. Travis McGowin: Yeah, so heat’s going to cause those molecules, whatever that odor molecule is attached to, the heat is going to lift it. And Michael and I can attest— Michael Wienecke: We’ve done smokers’ houses, and they don’t smell anymore. Travis McGowin: Right, but when you go in to check the temperatures every little bit, I mean, it dang near burns your eyes. Michael Wienecke: Oh, you’re off-gassing. Everything’s off-gassing, because everything has an ignition temp. So that may be 190 degrees that that table’s going to catch on fire, where that blanket may catch on fire at 145 degrees. Travis McGowin: Right, right. So it’s definitely a science to it. From a temperature control standpoint, from a circulation standpoint, it is definitely not going and buying a run-of-the-mill heater and sticking it in a room and hoping for the best. I think a lot of people think that just heat in general is going to solve the problem. But if you went and bought one or two or even three space heaters and stuck them in a room— Michael Wienecke: You’d burn the house down. Travis McGowin: Well, for starters, a lot of these space heaters have a safety temperature; they’re going to cut off at a certain point anyway, and for good reason. But even if you had one that didn’t, you’re not circulating the heat. So you may heat the front face of the bed, but you’re not going to get it all the way around the mattress, so the bed bugs, when they start to get hot, are going to move. And so you’re just not going to get the kill that you’re looking for with household items like that. Michael Wienecke: No. And I mean, these guys can get in cracks and crevices, like you said, behind wall voids, behind outlets, behind picture frames. I mean, they can get—you’ve seen them in a counter crack and crevice at a gas station before. Travis McGowin: Yeah, in the countertop at a gas station, and I think that was one of the employees that brought them in her purse or something like that. You know, and it’s funny, too. So let’s talk a little bit about the stigma surrounding bed bugs. Michael Wienecke: Yeah, and the customer today brought that up, you know? She was like, “We’re not gross people, we don’t know how we got it.” And that’s one thing that I really want to emphasize is that it’s not—no pest issue is really brought on by just being gross. Like, a rodent can get in your home just like a bed bug can get in your home. We could get it just as much as anybody else. However, if you go looking for things like used furniture off the side of the road—I was doing a bed bug job over in Pelham the other day, and a guy, all the stuff that they were throwing away was on the side of the road, and he pulled over and started looking at the furniture! Travis McGowin: Ooh. Michael Wienecke: And I was about to say, “I wouldn’t touch that.” Travis McGowin: I should have stuck a business card in the frame of the bed! But funny story, actually. We did a bed bug job a few years ago, and occasionally—and you’ve seen this, too—customers got fire alarms, smoke detectors. The heat treatment can set them off. I don’t think it’s necessarily the heat as much as it is the blowing around of dust and objects in the air. But we were at this one house treating the entire house. It was hot—I think June or July, hot outside, hot inside. And so we were sitting in the front yard under the tent in the shade cooling off after just checking the temperatures, and I could hear the smoke detectors start to go off in the house. I just went in there; I know the house is not on fire, of course. As we always do when something like that happens, we always go ahead back in and take a look and make sure nothing’s going on, and nothing was. And I told the other technician that was there with me, I said, “Get ready for the sirens.” He just kind of laughed, and sure enough, about 30 seconds to a minute later, you could hear the sirens from the fire engine coming that way. So obviously, they had not shut their alarm off or put it on test mode like we had asked, and the fire department was headed our way. So I stood up when they came around the curb, and fire truck pulls up. You and I have done this many times. People are slinging all their gear on, packing out, everything else. And I walk up to the officer’s side of the truck, and he had opened the door, and I looked at him and I said, “Hey man, the house is not on fire; we’re doing a bed bug heat treatment.” And he grabbed the door, looked at me, slammed the door back closed, and they left! Because they were not in any way, shape, or form about to walk into that structure! Michael Wienecke: I don’t blame them a bit! I wouldn’t take bed bugs back to the station. Travis McGowin: Right, which I just thought was hilarious. Now, should they have gone in and investigated? Probably, but they saw all of our equipment and everything else, so I think they knew we were legitimate. But it was still funny to me. Michael Wienecke: Oh, yeah! I’ve had the fire department show up on multiple different jobs in Birmingham, Homewood, Hoover… We’ve been doing this a lot. Travis McGowin: Absolutely. It’s inevitable. There again, we try to ask the customer, “Do you have a fire alarm with your smoke detectors?” Most people just have smoke detectors with no monitoring. But if you have monitoring, you need to call your monitoring company, you need to get it put on test mode or paused for the day so that we can do what we need to do. And then that way, we’re not triggering emergency services that could be potentially helping someone else. But just the look on his face when I said “bed bug heat treatment” was priceless. Everybody jump back in the truck and left, and they did not come back. And I think we called the homeowner and asked them, “Hey, you need to call your alarm company again.” “Oh, I already did.” “Well, you need to call them again.” And we set the alarm off again at some point, and they never showed back up, so I guess it worked. Michael Wienecke: They put themselves on test! Travis McGowin: Yeah, they were like, “We’re going to write that address down; we’re not going back there today.” But anyway, it was quite entertaining, but that just shows you, going back to the stigma—had they walked in and investigated the house, would they have taken bed bugs back to their station? Absolutely not. It’s just the fear of knowing that they’re there. We do inspections, and we’ve never taken them back. The only thing I’ve ever taken back to my house is fleas. Travis McGowin: I have taken—oh lord, I hope my wife doesn’t listen to this—I have taken fleas back… Michael Wienecke: German roaches? Travis McGowin: Oh, no, no, no! But I have taken fleas back to my house one time. I had a really, really bad infestation at an apartment complex here in Montgomery that we no longer service. The single worst I have ever seen, it was that bad. And so I noticed throughout the day as I looked down at my pant legs while I’m in the truck, there’s fleas. So what I’ll do is usually just pick them and throw them out the window. Michael Wienecke: That’s a lot of picking! Travis McGowin: It was. So I got home and went into my master bathroom to change. And when I changed clothes, I put some shorts on and noticed that there were fleas jumping on me, which evidently what I think happened was they got down into the cargo pockets in my pants. So I immediately took my pants and threw them in the bathtub, and could see fleas bouncing in the bathtub. And I immediately got product to treat the bathroom, and the wife was none the wiser. So this will be proof as to whether or not she listens to our podcast as to whether or not I get accused of bringing fleas into the house! Michael Wienecke: See, we were in Bluff Park and I brought them. That’s when we were living in Bluff Park and I brought them, and I told my wife, and we vacuumed and we treated and we got rid of them. Travis McGowin: Thankfully, it was limited to the bathroom, which was the hard floor, and thankfully I had the reaction enough to throw them in the bathtub. So the one or two or three that I had on me from outside the bathtub, I disposed of, and then I treated the bathtub, washed the clothes, and never had another problem. So I didn’t have to go full-scale flea treatment like we do with most houses. But it is a risk or hazard of the job: bed bugs, fleas, German roaches. There’s always the potential there, but that’s the only time I’ve ever brought something home in six years now. Michael Wienecke: Well, fleas are pretty common. And maybe that’s what we’ll talk about on our next podcast. But one thing back to the bed bugs, I want to emphasize this, is this is one of those things, you know, we try to preach that you can do some of this stuff yourself and you can control this yourself, but I personally would not recommend anyone doing this themselves. Travis McGowin: Not a heat treatment. Definitely not a heat treatment. I think that that is a risk-reward sort of deal if you really want to look at it that way. We as a company understand the risk of how we’re doing this. We also understand the payout and the rewards of it and how effective it actually is. Michael Wienecke: And you get a warranty! We give a 90-day warranty. Travis McGowin: Absolutely. And not only that, but we have the appropriate items to do it. We show up with the appropriate items, and we’re definitely not showing up with anything from a department store. Our system was specially made, specially ordered out of California—GreenTech Heat. And so I definitely get concerned when people hear, “Oh, well, all you got to do is apply heat.” Well, that’s part of it, but it’s the appropriate temperatures and the appropriate application and circulation of it for the appropriate time. And that’s something that space heaters are just not going to give you. Michael Wienecke: Well, you’ve got to get enough pressure and enough of that Venturi or recirculating or whatever you want to say around— Travis McGowin: Vortex. Michael Wienecke: Vortex, excuse me! I’m on two different wavelengths right now. I’ve also been up since 3:00 AM, so. But you’ve got to get that to be able to do, again, that convection is just so important, because if you’re like National Lampoon’s and you cook that turkey where it just pops open dry, it’s not going to solve your problem. Travis McGowin: No, absolutely. Like I said earlier, there’s a science to it, there’s a method to it, and it is very, very effective. That’s why as a company when we started discussing the treatment of bed bugs and if we were going to do that, that was why from day one we went ahead and opted for heat. We have never tried to do this any other way. Michael Wienecke: No, and I wouldn’t, because if I had bed bugs in my personal home, I would want them gone at the snap of a finger, and this is as close to that as we can get. Travis McGowin: Absolutely. So again, if you have bed bugs or you think you have bed bugs, today we’re in Montgomery, tomorrow we might be in Birmingham or Clanton or Auburn or wherever else that we’re licensed to treat in— Michael Wienecke: Whoa, we’re licensed everywhere to treat! All 50 states! Travis McGowin: Well, that’s the good thing about the heat treatment is that it’s not a chemical treatment. Michael Wienecke: I’m waiting for like a Hawaii phone call, you know, something we can go on a little trip. Travis McGowin: Yeah, load it up on the Peskies airplane, right? But no, if you find yourself in the predicament of thinking that you have an issue with bed bugs, give us a call. If you’re in Birmingham, (205) 470-8161 (tel:2054708161); if you’re in Montgomery, (334) 595-9055 (tel:3345959055). Let us come out and take a look, let us discuss your treatment options, let us be the provider of relief for you and your family. One-and-done treatment: start that morning with bed bugs, come back home that evening with no bed bugs. We also offer very convenient financing options for those that qualify, so we try to make this as painless as possible. You’ve already went through enough anguish having them in your house; we can solve it for you so that you can get a good night’s rest that night when you come back in. Michael Wienecke: Well, and I’ll say this, too: again, that warranty is so important. And just with every pest problem that we have, there can certainly be flare-ups, and we’re not immune to that. So we have had to do reservices on bed bugs, and we honor exactly what we say. We come back, we retreat, and if they’re not satisfied, we come back until they’re satisfied. Travis McGowin: Well, guaranteed. It’s on the back of every vehicle: you’ll be 100% happy or you won’t pay a penny. And that’s the way we are. We’re going to make sure that we do our best work for you, because that’s what we’re advertising and that’s what we give to each and every one of our customers. The post Don’t Burn the House Down: A Professional Guide to Bed Bugs (https://peskiespestcontrol.com/dont-burn-the-house-down-a-professional-guide-to-bed-bugs/) appeared first on Peskies Pest Control (https://peskiespestcontrol.com).

2. 

   30 Sept 2026

   The Hidden World of Drain Flies & Breeding Sites

   In this episode of the Peskies Pest Control Podcast (https://peskiespestcontrol.com/category/podcast/), hosts Michael Wienecke and Travis McGowin dive deep into the murky world of household plumbing to answer a simple yet unsettling question: what’s in your drain? From hair-clogged shower drains and dried-out guest toilets to hidden breeding grounds in garages and commercial kitchens, they uncover the real causes behind pest infestations like drain flies and fruit flies. Tune in to discover why bleach isn’t the quick fix you think it is, how structural plumbing issues can trigger surprise fly surges, and practical steps you can take to keep your drains clean and pest-free. Visit our YouTube channel! Podcast Transcript: Michael Wienecke: So what’s in your drain, Travis? Travis McGowin: Probably moisture, crud, and buildup, I’d have to guess. Michael Wienecke: I would have much rather heard “which drain,” because I have multiple different ones. Travis McGowin: Well, I mean, that too. I mean, obviously, there’s, you know, drains everywhere in your house—bathrooms, kitchens, laundry rooms… Sometimes people have them in their garage. I mean, there’s, you know, potential for drains to be in quite a few places. Michael Wienecke: And in our line of work, we see a lot of things in drains that shouldn’t be in drains. Travis McGowin: (Laughs) Absolutely! I mean—when you get right down to it, when you think about drains, you think about bathtubs and sinks. That’s probably about as far as your mind goes, but if you really wanted to get to the reality of it, toilets are drains too. Michael Wienecke: That’s very true. That’s very true. I was thinking more of a shower drain, and if you’re married or, you know, have a sister or what—if they’re, you know, most… Travis McGowin: Anyone with long hair. Michael Wienecke: Anyone—(laughs) I think women because my wife, but my shower—my shower drain has—has hair all—all in it. Travis McGowin: Oh, yeah. And it—it’s amazing how quickly it builds up. And, you know, no offense to my wife or any other female, but sometimes it’s like, “Dear Lord, how are you not bald?” Michael Wienecke: It just keeps on growing, man! I—I don’t—I’ve often thought that myself. But, you know, with hair in that drain causes a lot of issues, other than just, you know, gagging while you’re cleaning it out. Travis McGowin: Oh, it always has a very nice, pungent odor to it when you pull it out of the drain. Michael Wienecke: It’s so funny watching—like, I’ve seen videos of people, you know, trying to be manly and take it out of the drain; they’re just like about to just lose it. Travis McGowin: Gag—gagging the whole time. (Laughter) It is, it’s gross. It’s gross. Michael Wienecke: As firemen, we’ve seen a lot, so I feel like—I feel like we can handle a lot. But hey, on—on a side note, since we’re talking about gagging, we just got a puppy, and—and it—it used the bathroom in the garage this—this morning. So when I went in there, I—I almost lost it. And I was like, I guess I’m just getting old, I don’t know. Travis McGowin: Was it like, the smell permeated the entire room? Michael Wienecke: Yes! Well, it—I guess it’d been sitting there since, you know, whenever it did. And it was just like, “Oh!” It just hit me in the face. But… Now we have flies, you know? Had to take care of that today. Travis McGowin: So, you know, with drains—and we’ll—we’ll harp a little more on the shower drains and, you know, hair buildup in the drains. I’m sure you’ve been in this position where you pull the drain cover off and you go to pull the hair out, but like, it’s literally not just hair. It’s this very long, just—it’s like it keeps going and going, and it’s like whatever hair you had, and then whatever growth is on that and buildup is on that, it—it just stretches like way down into the drain. Um, you know, the dead giveaway sign for us is when it starts to back up and not drain properly while you’re using your shower, and then inevitably you pull the cover off and it’s just like this long growth buildup with hair and all manner of other mess on it. But I mean, think about any drain. Michael Wienecke: You’re painting an amazing picture. Travis McGowin: I know, right? I—I should’ve taken a picture—I’ll take a picture next time and send it to you. Michael Wienecke: We—we have plenty of video footage of drains. Plenty. Travis McGowin: But moisture—moisture’s the, you know, to me—obviously you got matter and—and items that get put into a drain, but moisture is to me the key ingredient, and it’s—it’s always gonna be there. I mean, drains have moisture in them by design, constantly. Michael Wienecke: Well, and the problem is moisture or lack of moisture can bring on problems. Travis McGowin: Right. So I’ve—I’ve seen it both ways. I’ve seen where, you know, the moisture sitting in the drain along with some organic material of some sort has caused a buildup, and then you end up with some sort of flying insect that gets down in it, and they start to breed and—and, uh, you know, set their larvae in there and just really go to town on making that a habitable place for them. And then I’ve seen on the opposite end of the spectrum where a drain or a—a toilet or what have you doesn’t get used on a regular basis, and so eventually that water evaporates out of it, and then whatever is beneath or behind that drain has fair room to come up the drain and into the living space of the house. Michael Wienecke: Oh man, we did a house in Mountain Brook years ago, and it was a—a renovation. And the guy—we—he hadn’t used the upstairs—the entire upstairs—in forever, and all of a sudden one day opens that door and millions—millions of them. It took—it took about six treatments to get it—get it gone. Travis McGowin: Yeah, I’ve even had a customer that has guest—you know, guest rooms with guest bathrooms in their house, and obviously, you know, have not had anyone come to stay with them in a while, and so the bathroom was just kind of overlooked—you know, out of sight, out of mind. And I went in there to treat, um, on a regular service, and I’m like, “What are these all over the floor, the window sill, and everything?” And it was literally little like drain flies or phorid flies, whatever—it’s been a while, so I don’t remember exactly what it was, but the toilet was completely dry. There was no water in it, and it just had completely evaporated out. And so they were able to go back and forth down into that drain, and of course, this is out in the—out in the county, so there’s no sewer or anything, it’s septic system. And I’m sure they were just able to go and make their way down in there and breed and do whatever they wanted to do. Michael Wienecke: Drain flies are the most disgusting, cute thing buzzing around in the air. (Laughter) Travis McGowin: I’m assuming when you say “cute,” you’re referring to the owl midge, if I—if I had to guess. With furry wings… Michael Wienecke: No, no, no, drain flies have like—the bunny—the bunny ear wings. Travis McGowin: Yeah, the little fur—like the little furry-looking wings. Michael Wienecke: Yeah, the drain fly. Travis McGowin: Right. Those are a lot of times—they’re—they’re part of a midge family, though, and—and so if you look it up, and look up an “owl midge,” that’ll be what you’re looking at. Michael Wienecke: They look kind of cute. You’ll have to show me exactly what you’re talking about. Travis McGowin: Yeah, just go to Google and type in “owl midge.” Michael Wienecke: Yeah, okay, owl midge. Travis McGowin: Yeah, do it right now so the listeners can hear. Michael Wienecke: I’ll—I’ll do it—I’ll do it later. I’ll do it later. I’ll take your word for it. But anyway, it’s a cute bunny ear little thing, but they’re disgusting because they come right out of, uh, the nastiest part of the drain. Travis McGowin: Right. And they’re breeding down there, they’ve got their larvae down there, their food source down there. And—and then, of course, inevitably, they’re landing in it. And then they’re going and landing all over your surfaces and landing on you or—or everything else, so… Michael Wienecke: Kind of like that YouTube video you did on the—the defecation in the—behind the parking lot. Travis McGowin: That is a classic! I don’t care who you are, that’s a classic. Michael Wienecke: It’ll never beat the squirrel video. (Laughter) So let’s talk about, um, something I’m seeing a lot of right now, and that is fruit flies. So I want people to understand that those fruit flies are not breeding on the fruit. They are breeding in the drains, in the garbage disposal… I mean, this whole thing’s about drains, so we could be talking about, you know, anything. Where are fish breeding? The drains—we’re talking about drains, gotta be the drains. Travis McGowin: So—so it can—it can definitely be the drains. I—I would even take that one step further and go on to say anywhere with—with some moisture content. Um, I have had a customer in Montgomery that actually had them infesting her garage. And, yeah, and that was kind of strange because there weren’t any drains, there wasn’t any… Michael Wienecke: A lack of drains. A lack of drain. Travis McGowin: Yeah, so here’s what it was, though. I—I told her, I said, “Look, if you’ve got this many, there’s a breeding site somewhere. Like, there’s—there’s no way around it.” And she racked her brain for a minute, I—and, you know, she couldn’t come up with anything that she thought’d be a breeding site. And I said, “Well, do you mind if I inspect and look around?” And she said, “No, that’s fine.” So I start going through the stuff on the shelves in the garage, and I come to this Walmart bag that’s like, kind of tied up. And you know how it is when you find a breeding site, and you just touch it and open it, it’s like (whoosh sound), like, you know, here they come. And, uh, I don’t know what was in that bag because it had decomposed down to mush so much in that hot garage, but that was the breeding site. And—and she was mortified; she didn’t know what it was, and so, course, obviously we disposed of it, but she had no clue that it was even there. Michael Wienecke: Sounds like a rodent got in there and died or something. Travis McGowin: I don’t know, or she does plant a lot, and I don’t know if it was some kind of flower bulbs or something that had decomposed or—whatever it was, it was mushy and decomposed, and they were loving it. Michael Wienecke: Did you taste it? Travis McGowin: No. Uh, the odor was pleasant enough to know that I didn’t need to taste it. Michael Wienecke: You gotta get the age, you know? It’s been here a while. Travis McGowin: Is that—is that how you do it? I’m gonna need you to make us a video on how—how it is you age things by tasting them. Michael Wienecke: Brody would’ve tasted it. (Laughter) Travis McGowin: But yeah, it—she was—it started to where she was noticing them in her house, and then she went and purchased like fly tapes and stuck them all in the garage and caught a whole bunch of them on fly tapes, too, and it was just never-ending, could never get a hold of them. And that was why; she just didn’t eliminate the breeding source. Michael Wienecke: Well, and I think it’s just important to say, you know, drains are used for one thing, but we’ve got to keep them clean. Um, and bleach is not the way to keep your drain clean, so let’s talk about some practices on just keeping a clean drain. Travis McGowin: To—you know, like I said, drains are going to have moisture in them. Uh, I’ll pull from another experience that I had with a—a commercial-type kitchen in Montgomery at a place we service. And they had these, um, rubber floor mats with the circle holes in them, you know, the non-slip floor mats? Michael Wienecke: Those are the worst for German roaches! We talked about that in the German roach podcast. Ugh, they’re horrible. Travis McGowin: Yeah, they’re—they’re terrible for German roaches, for sure. Michael Wienecke: For everything. Travis McGowin: But what had been happening in that kitchen was, is they had stuck one of those mats down on the floor over the top of one of the floor drains. Um, and so the floor drain had like a box with, of course, like, um, a drain lid on it that would let moisture through, but then the drain itself sat down in this inset box in the slab of the building. And man, when I tell you—I probably still have pictures of it somewhere—but when I pulled, and finally found it, and pulled that rubber mat up and looked, and took the cover off, like, just the growth and the crawling and flying going on from that one drain. And I went and got the staff, uh, person who’s over the kitchen, and I was like, “Hey, I want you to see something.” Michael Wienecke: They’re like, “Oh, we’ve never seen that before!” Travis McGowin: And literally, that’s what it was, like, “I didn’t even know that drain existed.” And I’m like, “Yeah, well, the flies do.” And, uh, now ever since then, that drain has been completely spotless; they have kept it immaculate. But it was—it was a nasty mess when I pulled that back. Michael Wienecke: Well, in restaurants especially, because things go down drains in—in there that they just, you know—there’s a lot going on in a kitchen, let’s just put it that way. Travis McGowin: Oh, I mean, everything from food to, you know, stagnant, nasty mop water, to grease and—and that sort of thing. I mean, there’s, yes, there are all types of things that get pushed down into those drains. And—and then, you know, they—they—they get all that mess down in there, and then they don’t drain properly or completely like they’re supposed to, and I’m sure you’ve seen backed-up drains just like I have. I mean, it’s—and then of course, then odors start to develop, and then flying insects come, and it—it’s just a vicious, terrible cycle. Michael Wienecke: Yeah, so I mean, the best thing is just get something that’s gonna eat away that organic matter down that drain, something that’s gonna be, you know, biodegradable and all that—all that. Travis McGowin: Right, they make, you know, a plethora of different products that I guess have enzymes in them that will break down that organic growth and buildup in those drains. And ultimately, with the goal of obviously eliminating odors and, um, keeping flying insects from having a place where they can take up root and—and breed. Michael Wienecke: Oh yeah. Well, and—and again, if it’s an issue, let’s talk about treatment, too. I mean, with—with us, we’re gonna put a—an adulticide and IGR down there. We’re gonna stop that complete breeding cycle as well as treating the current—the current flying issue. However, if it goes past that, you know, you get another issue after treatment, then we’ve got a drain issue, or we’ve got something way down there that needs to get addressed. Travis McGowin: Yeah, I’ve even had a customer that had their slab in their house had shifted, and it cracked their master drain, their—their, um, PVC drain in the slab—it cracked it. And so, they were consistently having a fly problem in their house. We treated it, it got a little better, and then it came right back; we treated it, it got a little better—just a vicious cycle. And after a time or two, I—I ended up telling the customer, “Have you ever thought about the fact that you may have a plumbing issue?” And it was—it was like a lightbulb went off in his head. He was like, “It’s funny that you say that because we’re currently working with insurance to see, because we’re gonna have to get our slab busted up and get our master drain fixed because it’s cracked—they scoped it and saw that it was cracked.” And I said, “That’s probably where the hang-up is, where all that stuff that’s supposed to be draining is not draining, and you’re getting these flies.” And sure enough, they got the drain fixed, um, the slab fixed, and they haven’t had a problem since. Michael Wienecke: I had a situation over off 280, and it was same situation. We treated, we treated, finally told ’em it was a drain issue. I got under there in the crawl space, took out the cleanout, shined a light, and you could see the bend, the bow of where the pipe had just—so it was—I’m sorry, it was bowing down, so everything was just sitting here, and you could actually see the crawlies, um—I call ’em crawlies, you know, the—the larvae just squiggling all around in there. And I was like, “Oh, well, we solved it without—without pesticide.” So they had got a plumber in and got it—got their—their pipe, uh, positioned in the right direction to drain, and they—it’s been solved ever since. Travis McGowin: I even went underneath a house one time for a wood infestation inspection in the crawl space… Michael Wienecke: I’ve been to a few of those. Travis McGowin: Yeah, just a couple. And they actually did not know that they had one of their drain pipes underneath there leaking or dripping or something. And so there was a big puddle of moisture underneath the crawl space, and it—you talk about the crawlies—it was literally moving. There were thousands of larvae just squirming inside of this nasty, wet, stagnant pool under there, and I mean like I said, thousands of them. And I remember when I got back with the client that I was inspecting the house, I asked him, I said, “You ever had a fly issue before, drain flies, anything like that?” And they were like, “No.” I said, “Unless you get your crawl space issue fixed, you will… because they were already, you know, underneath the crawl space on like the subfloor and the floor joists and all those places.” And so I told him, I said, “Uh, you got a leak, and it’s got a pool of water that is breeding these flies. So if you haven’t seen any in your house, give it time, you will, and it’s gonna be bad.” And I don’t know if they ever got it fixed or not, but hopefully they did. Michael Wienecke: They can just Delta Dust it every six months, it—it’ll be fine. (Laughter) Travis McGowin: Yeah, let’s—let’s not solve the problem, let’s just Band-Aid—Band-Aid solutions! Michael Wienecke: Oh, me! (Laughter) The post The Hidden World of Drain Flies & Breeding Sites (https://peskiespestcontrol.com/the-hidden-world-of-drain-flies-breeding-sites/) appeared first on Peskies Pest Control (https://peskiespestcontrol.com).

3. 

   23 Sept 2026

   Why DIY Pest Control Makes German Roach Infestations Worse

   In this episode of the Peskies Pest Control Podcast (https://peskiespestcontrol.com/category/podcast/), pest control experts Michael Wienecke and Travis McGowin share their wildest, most extreme job stories while diving into the reality of dealing with German roach infestations. From nightmare house calls and common DIY treatment mistakes to the surprising ways roaches invade clean homes, they break down why quick fixes don’t work and what it really takes to solve a serious pest problem. Subscribe to our YouTube channel! Podcast Transcript: Michael Wienecke: What’s the worst German roach service you’ve ever had? Travis McGowin: Ooh, I’ll be honest with you. I have one that still stands out in my mind that I went to in Montgomery several years ago. Uh, it was a residential property in, um, the northern part of Montgomery, and it was—it was bad. So, when they called about the infestation, on the phone, the lady advised me that, you know, it was mainly in one room. They’d been seeing them in the living room, um, and maybe a little in the kitchen. I walked into the house, and she looked at me, I looked at her, and I looked around the room, and I said, “This is, uh—this is a little bit more than just the living room and the kitchen, isn’t it?” And she said, “Yes, sir, it’s the whole house.” And I said, “Yeah, that’s kind of what I was thinking.” When I—when I tell you that there were German roaches in every single room, pretty much every single corner, any appliance, uh, piece of electronics, any piece of furniture, it—it was—it was the most, to date, since I’ve been doing this, it was the most significant one that I have ever walked into. Michael Wienecke: Were they trying to cure the problem themselves? Travis McGowin: You know, I—I don’t know 100%. I don’t remember seeing anything that gave me that indication, um, that they were trying to remedy it themselves. But, you know, that—that’s the problem, right? Is that when people get in too deep with some of these pest problems, you know, and specifically German cockroaches, and they try to remedy it themselves, a lot of times they exacerbate the problem and make it worse, and they move it from not only just being in one room to being in multiple rooms, to being in the whole house because they’re using the wrong products and the wrong methods. Michael Wienecke: 100%. So, um, I—I think that that would be the number one way that we get called out is that, would you say 90 days after trying to treat it themselves, it becomes an explosion that started probably in the kitchen or maybe in the bathroom, and now they’re seeing them in their bedroom, or they’re seeing them in, uh, you know, closets, things where they wouldn’t see them? And, uh, let’s explain why—why that’s happening. Travis McGowin: Well, I’ll—I’ll give you an example. Another, um, German roach infestation I went to that was actually in a mobile home. Uh, when I got there, I believe they told me I was, um—or I was with the third company that they had called. And, uh— Michael Wienecke: Wow. Travis McGowin: Yeah, absolutely. So, they were pretty desperate to get rid of them. I remember asking them—and I—and I typically ask most people this question, um, “All right, so after the other companies treated, did they ever come back?” And, of course, no, they did not, because, uh, I guess they thought that, um, this treatment for this customer was one and done, which it wasn’t. Michael Wienecke: Travis, it’s called a clean-out, okay? It’s—it’s a $199, and you’re good to go for the—for the next— Travis McGowin: Oh yeah, you’ll never have roaches again. Right, okay. Michael Wienecke: That’s—that’s right. Hey, they label it all day long. I’ve seen—I’ve seen the, uh—what are those things called? The yard signs. I’ve seen them. Travis McGowin: Well, we’ll go into in a minute why that’s not actually typically possible for German roaches. But, uh, but then I followed up with the question, “After they sprayed, was the problem any better, or did it get worse?” And the answer is most always, “It got worse.” And, uh, followed up by the third question, which is, “All right, so they started—you said they started in the kitchen. But after they sprayed, were they still just in the kitchen?” And that’s when the homeowner, of course, advised me that, no, they had moved, and that they had been in other rooms off of the kitchen as opposed to just being in the kitchen where they started. So, inevitably, what probably happened is the previous companies used a product that should never have been used. They got a little instant gratification by seeing some dead roaches. Um, but in reality, Michael, you and I both know that what happened was is that they just caused the infestation to relocate due to the product that they used that they should not have used. Michael Wienecke: Look, Bifen’s a great product. It’s a great product. It’s just not the product. Travis McGowin: Well, how many—how many times— Michael Wienecke: ‘Cause that’s probably what’s being—I mean, let’s just face it, that’s probably what’s being used. Travis McGowin: How many times have you heard me say, and anyone who’s listened to this podcast for any amount of time has heard me say, just because a product says it can be used for something doesn’t mean a product should be used for something. Michael Wienecke: That is my favorite, um—like if—if I’m having a consultation with a customer and we’re, you know, they’re dealing with German roaches, and we’re having—that’s my—that’s kind of my first question is, “What products are we trying to use or what products have we been using ourselves?” But it’s going to be a pyrethroid chemical, and it’s going to say it lasts for what? Is it 12 years or 12—12 months. 12 months. Travis McGowin: Mm, yeah. That’s one of my favorites, when you and I both know that a lot of those, uh, more generic products that they use last the, you know, if—if at all last 30 days, depending upon the environment that they’re sprayed in. Michael Wienecke: No. I wouldn’t even say 30 days. 12. Travis McGowin: 12 days? Michael Wienecke: 12 days. Travis McGowin: So, yeah. And so what—for—for as an example, so what I did in that extremely bad situation—and let me paint a little more backstory. So, the house was completely infested. Um, so we did actually initially perform a clean-out service. I’m not—I’m not trying to knock that to anyone listening. I’m not knocking a clean-out service. I’m not knocking a ULV fog. I’m not knocking any of that. It has its pur- purpose and its place. It does. And in this particular situation, we needed a significant knockdown on the population immediately. Um, it was ex- it was out of control. So, you have this family living there. It was a mother and—and her adult daughter, and then the daughter’s two children, so the lady’s grandkids. Um, so you had a—a family of four living there, and they literally, I mean, just were sharing—actually, I won’t even say sharing the house with roaches. Roaches were basically—they were—they were guests of the roaches at this point. It was that bad. So, I went in, uh, the—the homeowner, the family— Michael Wienecke: Could you—could you smell them? Travis McGowin: Heh, yeah. Yeah. Smell—smell-o-vision, is that what—that what we’ll call it? Michael Wienecke: Smell-o-vision? No, it’s— Travis McGowin: Yeah, you know, if you see something, you know, you—you watch these TV shows like Hoarders or something like that, and you see they’ve got significant German roach infestations, I’m like, “I know exactly how that house smells right now.” Michael Wienecke: Oh, yes. Yes. Yes, I can relate. Yes. Travis McGowin: Yeah. So, I went in, uh, initially, the first treatment I did, I ULV fogged. Um, left for several hours and then came back that same day, but later on in the day after everything had dissipated, and then started our normal treatment with, uh, you know, with different liquids and—and then some bait and some different products. And, um, I will tell you, when I opened the door after the initial clean-out ULV fog, the amount of dead German roaches on the floor was—was pretty significant. Um, and there was even, uh, an American roach dead, and I’m—he was like the only one. I’m like, “Well, buddy, you just picked the wrong house.” Like, heh! Michael Wienecke: That just goes to show you the, uh, the infestation level between an American cockroach and a German cockroach right there. Travis McGowin: Sure. Uh, and I’ve got—I’ve still got photos from this infestation that I took. So, this next time I went in there, I—I did the normal treatment, um, and then I went back, you know, usually our protocol’s 30 days. So, the next time I went back, um, the—the population, the activity was significantly, significantly reduced. But that’s the unfortunate part is that after that last time, I never got to go back. Um, they—they canceled service, um, by no fault of us. I—I think that they saw improvements, they thought it was better, didn’t want to pay for it anymore, and so they canceled service. And, uh, so I can only imagine that they probably ended up maintaining German roaches even after that because we didn’t get to follow through with our treatment protocol. But I—I do know this: it was significantly better than when I found it, when I left it. Heh. Michael Wienecke: Well, that’s, yeah. So, yeah. I mean, that’s—that’s all you can ask for. I mean, we have so many German roach services that we do, and I try to always let customers know that, hey, we—we need to stick this through. Even one roach—I mean, one roach can produce how many? 40? 46, babies? Travis McGowin: Yeah, I mean, it—it—it varies. But I think here another key point to remember and why what we were talking about a few minutes ago about the clean-out service being one and done is not a good idea: Michael, can any pesticide penetrate the egg of an insect? Michael Wienecke: No. Travis McGowin: Absolutely correct. No, it cannot. So, if you go in and you, let’s just say, you go buy a store-bought little fogger canister that people like to buy, or even a pest control company comes in and ULV fogs, once that product’s gone, it’s gone. It doesn’t penetrate the eggs. So, after you’ve killed—even if you killed every bit of the adult population, you still didn’t get the eggs. So, the eggs are still going to hatch, and the eggs are still going to, you know, continue to further along the population of this German roach infestation. Michael Wienecke: Look, I’ve got to go off on a little tangent here. Please stop—please stop using those things in your crawlspace. Heh. Please! I mean, I crawled a crawlspace the other day, and there was 17 of those things in there. And I’m like—I mean, I’ve got a respirator on and a suit on, and I’m definitely safe as far as that, but it’s just, first of all, that’s way overkill. And second of all, there’s nothing to kill in the crawlspace. Travis McGowin: Well, I actually had a customer the other day tell me that every so many months they buy foggers and set them off in their house per—just—just to make sure. Yeah. They said that she’s overkill on bugs, and—and maybe she—maybe they’re only termites with us, I can’t remember. Maybe—I think they said they handle the other stuff on their own, obviously. So, but she said that they—every—every few months, she will go buy foggers, set them off, and leave the house. Just—just because. Michael Wienecke: Inside? I mean, I just, again, not my—I don’t recommend it. We don’t recommend pesticide in your home or—or any insecticide or—or any chemical unless you need it. Um, but I—I definitely wouldn’t fog it just to fog it. Travis McGowin: So, I think another—here’s another thing, and you’ve probably heard this, too, when speaking with clients or potential clients. I think there’s this, um—and I—and I hear this repeated from a lot of folks, but I think there’s this stigma that, “Oh, I have roaches, I’m dirty.” Michael Wienecke: Oh no, not at all. Not at all. Travis McGowin: Right. And I hear—and I hear people say—say things like, “I’m not dirty. I’m not dirty.” And— Michael Wienecke: That’s like having rats and saying you’re dirty. That’s not fair at all. Travis McGowin: Right. So, the—the thing is, people need to understand, it—it’s the same way with residential property, it’s the same way with restaurants and commercial properties: you don’t necessarily have to be dirty or have an unkempt house or an unkempt business to have these insects. They—yes, they thrive on dirty environments. Yeah. They thrive on dirty environments. If you have a dirty environment for them, the likelihood that the infestation’s going to balloon into this really big problem quicker is—is almost 100% chance. But these insects can travel to your home super easy and infest under your nose before you know it, even in the cleanest of homes. That’s what I want people to understand, just because someone has some German roaches does not mean that they don’t keep a clean house. Michael Wienecke: I was about to say that. Yes. No, not at all. I mean, I—and throwing that out there, and this is something that I personally do myself, but look. Look behind—if you’re buying a new refrigerator, just look at the appliance and make sure you don’t see any egg sacs, uh, glued to it, or something just strange that—that looks kind of alien-like. Um, or just a roach. Um, or if—I mean, hotel, motel, I mean, look, because if you put a bag down there and they get in that bag, then they can come to your house. I mean, we—we see it all the time. You know, uh, I—I had a house, what, probably $3 million home that—that had them pretty bad because they bought a refrigerator, and who knows where they came from out of the refrigerator, but they, uh—they got the prize. Travis McGowin: You know, that’s a typical one I see, too. Uh, the—with the creation of—of online marketplaces, Facebook Marketplace, you know, um, Craigslist, if that’s even still really a thing anymore, uh, eBay. But, you know— Michael Wienecke: Oh man, mm. You just brought it back, Travis. Heh! You just brought it back! Travis McGowin: I know, right? Michael Wienecke: People probably like, “Craigslist, what is that?” No. Travis McGowin: I’ll give you a throwback: The Bulletin Board. Michael Wienecke: Oh, is that that magazine? The—the—the country— Travis McGowin: Yeah. Yeah, I used to—I used to look through that as a kid. The Bulletin Board. Michael Wienecke: I did, too. I bought so many—I bought so many four-wheelers off of that. I forgot about that. Man, that was—that’s a long time. Travis McGowin: But second-hand furniture, second-hand appliances, that’s—there’s nothing wrong with that. But you just have to do your due diligence when you get it before you bring it into your home because I—I had a lady—I’m not going to say the business where she got it from, uh, but I had a lady, um, get a refrigerator from a rent-to-own establishment and ended up with German roaches in her house from this reputable place, you know, that you can get items and rent-to-own. She got a refrigerator. So, uh, the other thing, too: cardboard boxes. If you’re ordering things online, I mean, keep in mind, these boxes sit in warehouses in boxes. They get shipped on, you know, 18-wheelers and box trucks and things like that. And you can’t control, um, you know, what insects might or might not be in these places. And, you know, you bring your cardboard box in. My advice to people is, hey, when you order something, open the box, get your item out, and then dispose of all the trash. Don’t leave it sitting in your house for days or weeks at a time. I mean, these are, you know—these are ways, simple ways, that you can help yourself avoid a potentially very frustrating infestation of an insect. Michael Wienecke: Well, I mean, that’s how all these insects and—and rodents and—and everything has—it’s come from shipping routes, and it’s come from travel and all that. So, um, it’s no different than with the deer. It just goes from state to state to state. Now, some can survive cold, some can do better in the heat, so on and so forth, so. Travis McGowin: Absolutely. But, you know, my—my advice to anyone that feels in—in over their head, uh, feels like they just can’t get ahead of the insects, um, you know, is unsure where to start or unsure where to go from, you know, trying to buy store-bought products that just haven’t worked or have made the problem worse, call yourself a pest control professional that has the knowledge, skills, and abilities to use products on the market that are effective against insects like German roaches, um, and not only just the product, but proper product placement, knowledge of how to use that product and where to apply it, because that’s just as important as the active ingredient itself. Michael Wienecke: I would say the most important. Travis McGowin: Yeah, if you don’t get it where it needs to go, then, you know, you’re just spinning your wheels. I mean, you’re still going to be stuck in the same problem or the same situation. Um, and, you know, get someone reputable that is very well-versed and knowledgeable on the safe use of that product, too, because, obviously, we’re coming in to try to get rid of something that is a detriment and a harm to your family, um, from a health perspective. The last thing you want is for someone to come in and be a detriment and a harm with the products that they’re applying as well as with the insects that are already there. Michael Wienecke: 100%. Well, and I mean, I’m glad you said something about the health of the—the roaches. I mean, those roaches crawling all over the food, salmonella, you know, the droppings, you’re breathing all that. The, uh—the little flakes, you know, that they—that they like to—to cause over time, you, you know, you’re breathing all that, you’re ingesting all that. So, uh, definitely, definitely a health issue. Travis McGowin: Yeah, and, uh, that really bad infestation that I went to years ago, um, heh, when I started doing the regular treatment later that afternoon after the fog, the—the family had gotten home, and the two children, which were probably under the age of like four or five years old, were running through the house barefoot, and there were dead German roaches all over the floors. Michael Wienecke: Ooh. Oh my. Travis McGowin: Yeah, so you can get that mental picture, heh, too. So, um, but I—I really did feel bad for them because I thought to myself, if—if the individuals living in that house did not have some sort of respiratory problem or other health problem associated with these, if they didn’t already, they, at some point, would without help. Michael Wienecke: Well, and that type of infestation that you’re describing, heh, I’ve had quite a few, and it can take up to a year to get rid of. I mean, those guys are in every crack and crevice. Travis McGowin: Oh, they were in the wall voids at that point. Michael Wienecke: I’ve been on—I’ve been on some where you open the door, and they just hit the brim of your hat, and they’re just falling off the brim of your hat, and you’re like, “Well, I don’t need to—I know what we got.” Heh! Travis McGowin: Right. Right, it—it makes it real simple to identify. Um, definitely, but— Michael Wienecke: Yes. Yes. Travis McGowin: Yeah, they’re—they’re definitely a big nuisance, they’re definitely a big health problem and a health risk, and, uh, it’s just not something that you want to share your living space with. Michael Wienecke: Yep. So, hey, fun fact real quick, and then we’ll hop off this, but, um, I was over in Columbiana, and I experienced my first ever, uh, Asian roach. I wouldn’t say—I wouldn’t say infestation, but Asian roach, uh, um—I don’t know, they were just coming out of the pine straw. They were coming out—they were coming out like crazy. Travis McGowin: Where—where have you been? Heh! Man, I couldn’t—I couldn’t tell you how many times I have been spraying, uh, doing, you know, exterior services and—and been treating around the outside of a house and hit pine straw or mulch and had them come out of the woodwork. Michael Wienecke: Man, I have not seen one in Birmingham. I’ve not seen one in Vestavia. I— It scared me ’cause I was like, “These are German roaches!” And what—and then, uh, they were flying! And I was like, “German roaches can’t fly!” So, I started—I started kind of, you know, getting my nerd—nerd-up book out there, and, um, yeah. So, Asian roaches, they’re flying all over the place. So, I even put in my notes, heh, I was like, “Uh, just treated, you know, Asian—” They were—they were everywhere. I have never—I didn’t know— Travis McGowin: They go climbing up the sides of the house and everything, I mean, big and small, they just come out of the woodwork. Michael Wienecke: Well, they seemed to all be the same size on—on my end, but I was just—I was worried about them flying into the—to the office that we were treating and everything. I was like, “Oh my god, this is—this is horrible.” Travis McGowin: Yeah, they’re, uh—uh, for those that don’t know, they are kind of an imposter. Um, they look identical to a German roach, except they typically only live outside. Uh, they do fly, whereas German roaches do not fly. Uh, and German roaches have to live inside, whereas Asian roaches like your areas in mulch beds and pine straw beds underneath, uh, where the decaying vegetation, moisture is. Uh, but yeah, they can—they can give you quite a—a jump there when you, you know, treat them with a product, and then all of a sudden, I mean, just literally 30 of them come right out from underneath pine straw where you’re treating at. I mean, there’s right there— Michael Wienecke: Oh, thousands! Thousands! I mean, I was just talking about in like a couple feet span there. No, Travis. I don’t—It—it—it worried me for a minute. It was thousands! Heh! Travis McGowin: Oh yeah. Well— Michael Wienecke: They started dying off, but again, it was—it was quite—quite, uh, remarkable. I know you’re in—over in Montgomery, you always talk about them, but we don’t see them here, so. Travis McGowin: Oh, you can have them. Heh! Michael Wienecke: Well, we got them! We got them, they’re here. So, eventually, they’ll be in Birmingham and everywhere else, I’m sure. Coming to a town near you. The post Why DIY Pest Control Makes German Roach Infestations Worse (https://peskiespestcontrol.com/why-diy-pest-control-makes-german-roach-infestations-worse/) appeared first on Peskies Pest Control (https://peskiespestcontrol.com).

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