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Roaches
Penguin_Otaku
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I'm staying in a place over the summer with some friends.
As you can assume from the title... there are bugs. In the first few days I didn't see a whole lot of them. While watching TV I see two of them scurry across the table and one into my shot glass.
We have some spray... and it seemed to work for a while. But tonight I saw these two fucks and went to spray the kitchen just to go toward the source and holy hell there were a lot of them. When I sprayed more seem to run out to avoid death by pesticide... or whatever the stuff is.
Alright, they'd never made it this far before from what I had seen. The kitchen is down a short hallway, but I'd only seen them around the cabinets... and even in one of the bathrooms near the kitchen. I'll say taking a shit and seeing a roach crawl up your leg is terrifying.
What's the best route here?
"Call an exterminator."
Way down with this idea. However, I'm just kinda the guy crashing on the couch. We're all friends. One of us who's not so good with dealing with people is the liaison to the landlord. It was over a week before we had AC and a little longer until we had a working fridge. The landlord has supposedly said he won't spring for an exterminator...which I think is bullshit. I don't think the guy would want his family/kid(s) to be staying in a place where there's not a working AC in the Oklahoma summer, working AC and... bugs!
I'm not on the lease or really paying rent so I don't think I have a whole lot of say in this, but I'm wanting to know how I can make the next two months a little easier for me and protecting my food and things.
As you can assume from the title... there are bugs. In the first few days I didn't see a whole lot of them. While watching TV I see two of them scurry across the table and one into my shot glass.
We have some spray... and it seemed to work for a while. But tonight I saw these two fucks and went to spray the kitchen just to go toward the source and holy hell there were a lot of them. When I sprayed more seem to run out to avoid death by pesticide... or whatever the stuff is.
Alright, they'd never made it this far before from what I had seen. The kitchen is down a short hallway, but I'd only seen them around the cabinets... and even in one of the bathrooms near the kitchen. I'll say taking a shit and seeing a roach crawl up your leg is terrifying.
What's the best route here?
"Call an exterminator."
Way down with this idea. However, I'm just kinda the guy crashing on the couch. We're all friends. One of us who's not so good with dealing with people is the liaison to the landlord. It was over a week before we had AC and a little longer until we had a working fridge. The landlord has supposedly said he won't spring for an exterminator...which I think is bullshit. I don't think the guy would want his family/kid(s) to be staying in a place where there's not a working AC in the Oklahoma summer, working AC and... bugs!
I'm not on the lease or really paying rent so I don't think I have a whole lot of say in this, but I'm wanting to know how I can make the next two months a little easier for me and protecting my food and things.
Penguin_Otaku on
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If the landlord will not get an exterminator:
1) He's incredibly stupid. He's destroying the value of the property.
2) You guys either need to pool your money and pay for it, or find another place. Cockroach infestations are no joke; the bugs absolutely will overrun your home, and they are vectors for some nasty diseases (up to and including Yersinia pestis - the bacteria that causes bubonic plague).
There are some simple traps you can employ, like so-called 'Vegas Roach Trap' (take a mason jar, fill it maybe halfway with water, smear coffee grinds on the inside of the jar. The cockroaches will climb / fall into the jar to get the non-existent food they smell, then drown), but most of these will have a pretty minor impact on the population.
Find out who you need to contact for your area to ask the right questions, but there will be a process. The end of that process is usually you getting it done and then paying that much less in rent the next month. Again, varies by region and you need to go through the proper channels, but this isn't something you just have to live with.
As the "guy on the couch," are you paying any rent?
This will likely kill off most, but definitely not all, of your roaches and lessen the problem for the short term. The difference between these and your as-you-see-them sprays are that this effectivly makes dead zones on the ways into your rooms which kill off the bugs as they enter your home. You will have a lot of roach corpses, especially in the first few days.
These don't last long and are not a good replacement for a real exterminator. However, if it looks like it may be a few months before you will have one come out it would probably be a good call.
These tend to run about $15-40 depending on quantity and quality. Be very careful though, this is poison you are dealing with and you should ALWAYS follow the instructions.
But in all seriousness, yes your landlord should be liable for pest control, but they more than likely will not care based on your other comments (AC, fridge) and getting them to fork over the service will be very arduous and will probably only hurt what weak relationship the tenant / landlord already have.
I say look up the legal requirements he has for pest control (should be easy enough with google and your county's rental codes), let him know about them, but at the same time start looking for a new place.
You say you're only crashing on the couch with no rent for a couple of months, so the above is more a long-term solution for your friends who actually live there. They really should look into that though.
As for your own 2 months living there, yes plastic bags, and zone pest control as Enc mentioned. Also tell your roomies to be as clean as possible (don't leave food out, don't leave dirty dishes out, etc.) to minimize their drive to be there.
Witty signature comment goes here...
wra
That's the most terrifying thing I've ever heard. I'm not gonna be able to take a comfortable shit for month now... asshole.
But seriously, look into what rights y'all have, and if needed strong arm the slumlord into paying for an exterminator (because I'd wager, like most states, he's almost surely required to handle pest control). If he can't be forced and/or refuses, I wouldn't stay there. From the sounds of things, you've got a pretty serious infestation, and nothing short of professional exterminating will likely solve it... well, I guess depending. Is this a house, an apartment? If it's a house, throwing out some bombs might do the trick. If it's an apartment or connected to other housings, then just fumigating your living area will effectively solve jack shit. You'll kill a whole bunch of roaches, and then some new ones will pour in from next door.
I'm going to talk to the other rent paying roommates and let them know that this guy is legally obligated to get this shit taken care of. Now that I think of it, apparently someone talked to a bug guy who offered to spray for about 150 (landlord came up with some... $700 figure some way/somehow) so that makes the situation even worse...
On top of this, the guy (let's call him Jay because that's his name) who's the liaison with the landlord asked about prorated rent because of the lack of AC and fridge and gave back about 300... that's just about under a 1/5 of the rent these guys pay. Personally when they told me that the landlord wouldn't do anything about the bugs I immediately wondered what the hell he was doing with the rent money instead.
Anyway, my best option is to get people who know Jay better (we're friends, but I'm closer with the rest of the group) to get him to do something and to be on his and the landlord's ass about this. I'm afraid to leave an open container out now after seeing those fucks in here.
Appreciate all the advice so far.
That process does start with sending him a certified mail letter informing him of the problem(s) though. So if you guys want to do that, and then look up renter rights for your state, that's a start. I'm not sure if you have to actually go to court, or whatever, but it's pretty much a renter's only option.
The thing about roaches is that when you spray one place, they just pack up and leave and move over to the adjoining apartment. Then, next month they come back just like they were before.
There are a lot of things you can do to make your apartment less habitable for roaches. Look around online and do them all.
Also, move.
These guys are dragging their feet on the whole issue and no one wants to be the "bad guy" for bringing it up to the landlord. I brought it up this morning to one of the roommates that's good friends with Jay, but he said they were going to let the landlord try to fix it over the weekend and if that didn't solve things...
Now I completely understand with all of you that that's a fucking stupid way to handle all of this and I agree. But again, I'm just couch guy.
The more you guys talk about him being a slumlord, I don't know if it's that bad. The guy's just a cheapskate that's trying to do a bunch of DIY things and the fridge being late was a problem with the store that ordered it (also, the guys unplugged it after he came by, moved it to the fridge and all of a sudden it works perfectly.)
Regarding the AC, ya that's complete bullshit. On the DIY note... the reason it took an extra weekend (Fri-Sun) was because he was supposed to dig the hole to bury the freon line in and hadn't done it by the time the crew had shown up and thus delayed the AC... Not sticking up for him, just letting you guys know how he handles things... but I'm sure this probably just qualifies him as a "slumlord" some more.
I have issue with him waiting to fix things on his time for multiple reasons:
One, it hasn't been prompt. We were delayed moving into this place by a solid week + because another one of his properties had their basement flood. Ok, that's all good and well. Hire some fucking people to take care of your shit, though.
Two, he comes on weekends when we're mostly just trying to hang out with not much else to do. This impedes on some would-be recreational activities. That's neither here nor there, but I'm sure all of you would agree it's hard to be completely comfortable with the landlord is roaming around with no real timetable.
At this point I'm just kinda venting and rambling, so I'm sorry for that.
Do you have a cite for this? I've been renting for 13 years and it has always been in my lease that the tenant is responsible for pest control.
Generally the one and only exception, unfortunately in this case, are single family dwellings, but this varies from state to state too.
http://www.tenant.net/Other_Areas/Oklahoma/tenant.html#s118
http://www.tenant.net/Other_Areas/Oklahoma/tenant.html#s121
Seems Oklahoma would make an exception here, though, as a tenant you might want to see if the roaches are your responsibility since they probably were there before you started your lease.
Landlord is a cheapskate that is into DIY? That's a slumlord. A landlord owns a business, which invests in rental property. A slumlord owns property, which he rents out and only does maintenance that doesn't cost him money.
Also, he can't just "drop by on the weekend". He has to make an appointment at least a day in advance. He's already in violation of rental law, invalidating the lease. (For citation, see the links bowen posted.)
An important note regarding bug bombs: NEVER DO THIS! All this does is drive the roaches into the deepest parts of the house, where the bomb doesn't reach. Then you call an exterminator and they say you have to tent it. I'm guessing this is what happened.
Bait is the most effective cure for roaches, because not only does it kill the individual roach who eats it, but the babies eat the adults' droppings, which contains the poison.
First, get a Fipronil roach boat. Like this one.
http://www.amazon.com/Maxforce-Fipronil-Cockroach-German-Control-1/dp/B0042JF3C0
You can also get Combat Source Kill MAX, which is basically the same thing, at, say, Target or Wal-Mart or whatever if you don't want to wait for something to arrive you bought online.
Dab pea-sized amounts anywhere and everywhere you can in the corners of your kitchen and bathroom. Also around light sockets, light switches, anywhere that electric appliances are plugged in. It's warmer around those outlets, as well as inside those appliances, such as a landline phone or whatever, so the roaches will nest there. Look for a congregation of their droppings, which look like this:
Basically similar to salt and pepper.
Anywhere you see those, bait in the corners and up against the wall. Roaches will almost always run against a wall or baseboard when they're out foraging unless there's food out in the open. Bait the corners inside your drawers and cabinets and under the sink, especially where the water pipes meet the wall. Basically anywhere you think a roach would live, bait it. Roaches are cannibalistic...they will eat the carcasses of any other dead roach, so once these things start dropping dead from the bait, the other roaches will eat their corpses and the bait will be passed to them, and so on and so forth until the queen is dead.
You can also get a liquid bait and mix it with some Borax, which will turn it into a gel that you can apply to the corners and such. The bait will work the same as the Fipronil, with the added bonus of the Borax acting as a desiccant and killing the roaches from the inside out. Then you will have the poison spread in the same way as the bait. If you have any Borax left (assuming you got the powder form, which is easily available), puff some into the walls in the affected areas as someone recommended before. It will stick via static electricity to the inside of your walls for at least 6 months and either kill or drive off the colony if the bait doesn't do so.
Hopefully this helps, and again, do not spray anything. It's pretty much the worst thing you can do for a roach infestation. If you hire an exterminator to come out and he comes in with the hand-held spray pump to spray the cabinets and baseboards, send his ass back out to his truck and tell him you want him to bait and apply Boric Acid (Borax) to your place. The only effective method for dealing with roaches is tainting their food source and getting the poison to the queen.