thread: Arrrrh! Pests and bugs in our rental!

Hybrid View

Previous Post Previous Post   Next Post Next Post
  1. #1
    Registered User

    Oct 2008
    Canning Vale, Perth
    1,318

    Im in a rental and im pretty sure you have to pay for pest control yourself, you can call your agents and ask, we are lucky and have good agents that manage to get owners to fix everything within 24 hrs of reporting it and are willing to go halves in an air con, maybe u can ask if owners will go halves in pest control? I think its a hundred or two for a normal sized house, lasts way longer than anything you can buy at supermarket/bunnings too.

    We get the huge ****roaches too over here in Perth, they are gross but luckily they are not after food unlike the small black ones and tend to be loners and not infest.

    We found some good spray at supermarket, its mortein lure n kill surface spray, it smells like orange which is slightly better than that horrible fly spray smell, it does lure the ****roaches but its very potent and we find them dead within 30cm of walking over where we've sprayed. So that could be a quick fix for a while, good luck!

  2. #2
    Registered User

    Oct 2003
    Forestville NSW
    8,944

    mmm we have a house in Brissy and we had it sprayed the week we moved, but some severe weather in November brought a huge wave of fleas, which we never had issues with while living in there. As I know already that fleas can lay dormant for 12 months so we had to get someone out again to treat it for fleas. We were contacted by the agency to tell us it needed to be done and we said fine.

  3. #3
    Registered User

    Oct 2006
    Sydney NSW
    4,837

    I think there is a plague of insects in Sydney atm! I have ants everywhere in my kitchen. I put out ant rid every day and then they go but are back in a day. We had fleas and DH put bombs under the house cause he said there were millions of them in the dirt under there cause the previous owners appeared to have had a dog under the house ay some point.
    Be careful with all this insect killing spray when you are pg.

  4. #4
    Registered User

    Nov 2006
    Somewhere Over The Rainbow
    3,094

    mrs mac we are having the same problem! ants, silverfish and a few roaches.

    I dont like to spray with chemicals, we are a chemical freee house! and its hard being in a unit, you never know how dirty next door is.....

  5. #5
    Registered User

    Oct 2006
    Sydney
    4,081

    It might be worth talking to your agent about. They may well say the owners will pay to have it done for you. Professional spraying should help a lot with your insect pests, but as others have said it can be exey.
    I have to admit, spiders don't bother me a great deal - we get heaps of little ones around the place and I kind of like them because they eat the smaller, bitey insects I wish they would catch some of our moths that we have around the joint atm though.
    Not much you can do about possums (even trapping and re-location doesn't work because you can't take them too far away so they just end up coming back again), and IME mice are extremely difficult to get rid of, particularly if you have lots of vegetation around your home. If the carpet is old and a bit yucko then that will attract the mice, so it could be worth asking for new carpet.
    ETA: The ants - we have been getting these tiny ones lately - you can hardly see them but they are attracted even if I put a knife in the sink still with some butter on from my toast! I have never seen them in Syd before. My sister had them up in Cairns but they seem to have found their way into my kitchen!

  6. #6
    Registered User

    Apr 2008
    4,427

    Thanks so much for the info girls. Mrs Mac, I think you are right about the insect plague at the moment!
    We have floor boards (no carpets) which is great as we dont have the flea problem and even though we have 2 dogs, neither have had a flea in about a year and a half. I am always checking them.
    Tattoomama- thanks for the heads up on the spray that doesnt stink like fly spray. I might make a trip to the supermarket today.
    Snacks- I will give the landlords a call today. Unfortunately they property manage themselves so I always feel awkward about asking stuff to be done as I have to do it directly. thanks for your advice.

  7. #7
    Registered User

    Mar 2006
    soon to be somewhere exotic
    1,550

    depends on what is stated in your rental agreement

    when I rented out my place the pest control was done so the tenant didn't have to do it

    the house Dh and I were living in, it was our responsiblity to get it professionally pest treated when we moved out - this was stated in the lease

  8. #8
    Registered User

    Oct 2006
    Sydney
    4,081

    Yeah, I think I'd find that awkward too! But still, it is worth mentioning, even if you inwardly acknowledge that you may need to pay for it yourself.
    We were going to buy a new arial for our place recently and mentioned it to the agent (we intended to pay for it ourselves - just wanted to upgrade) but she said she'd talk to the owners and they did agree to pay... And it got done really quickly too! So it is always worth asking, I reckon
    GL!!!