Keeping a home clean can help prevent cockroaches, but cleanliness may only do so much to stop their appearance. A number of Brisbane homeowners are surprised to find cockroaches despite having clean kitchen benches, regularly vacuumed floors and properly stored food.
The reason for this is simple: cockroaches are incredibly resourceful creatures.
Cockroaches need food, water and shelter to survive, but they can sustain themselves on very little of any of them. Crumbs under the fridge, grease on the stove, pet food, rubbish residue and even cardboard can act as a food source for cockroaches. Your home may look clean, but it could have enough food for cockroaches to thrive.
Water is another big attractant for cockroaches. Leaking taps, condensation, damp cupboards, bathroom moisture and water underneath the fridge or dishwasher can sustain them as well. Brisbane’s warm and humid climate can make moisture easy to find.
Cockroaches also need shelter, and they tend to look for it in dark places that will not readily give up their inhabitants. Gaps behind kitchen cabinets, wall cavities, cracks around plumbing, inside cupboards, drains and the space underneath the washer are all potential cockroach habitats.
This means you may only see a small proportion of a much larger cockroach population that inhabits your property.
Another reason why it can seem like cockroaches always keep coming back is reproduction. Some species can reproduce rapidly if the conditions are right. Eggs can be hidden in otherwise inaccessible areas, so seeing a cockroach does not mean you know where all of them are.
Cockroaches can also enter your home from the outside. Gaps underneath the door, cracks in the walls, in the drainage system, roof space and penetration points for pipes can create entry points. Residents in apartment buildings and townhouses may find it particularly easy for cockroaches to pass from one into the other through shared walls or penetrations.
Fluctuating seasonal conditions can affect the likelihood that cockroaches will enter and leave buildings. Warm weather, humidity and rain can encourage them to seek out new sources of food and shelter. Brisbane’s subtropical climate means that there are conditions for several cockroach species to thrive for much of the year.
Tidy homes, sealed containers, regularly emptied rubbish and repairs can make a home less appealing to cockroaches. It is also a good idea to check harder to see if there are cockroaches in more out-of-reach places like behind the refrigerator, underneath the sink and around penetrations.
Simply focusing on the cockroaches that you can see may only give you an idea of the scale of the problem.
Homeowners wanting to learn more about common Brisbane pest activity can also visit Brisbane Termite & Pest Control for information relating to local pests and termite concerns.
Ultimately, discovering cockroaches does not automatically mean a home is dirty. They are opportunistic insects capable of surviving in tiny spaces with very limited resources. Identifying the food, moisture or shelter attracting them is the first step towards understanding why they keep appearing.
