How frequently should I schedule pest control?
The presence of pests is horribly frightening for so many of us, yet regular pest control services are an often neglected area of property maintenance. Clients often call us after seeing an increased amount of a particular pest around, or after realising it’s been years since their last pest inspection! So how frequently should you schedule pest control?
Residential Pest Control
Regular pest control visits ensure that you and your loved ones are kept safe from pests – safe from the fright of encountering a rat or roach, safe from them chewing through important wires or furniture and safe from accidentally ingesting their droppings in your food.
Our advice is to schedule pest control once a year, preferably just before the Summer months when more pests like to come out to play. If you have a heavy infestation of pests, your applications may need to be closer together to ensure you get your problem under control and can then go back to undertaking preventative pest control measures.
Restaurants and cafes
The Food Standards Code requires food businesses to take all practicable measures to prevent pests entering the food premises and eradicate and prevent the harbourage of pests on the food premises. To avoid the chance of failing your food safety inspection, we recommend scheduling pest control treatments every 6-12 weeks.
Supermarkets and food stores
Like restaurants and cafes, supermarkets and grocery stories must comply with the food standards code. We also recommend scheduling treatments at 6-12 week intervals. It’s an extremely necessary measure against having to throw away a lot of otherwise perfect produce.
Hotels
Like restaurants and cafes, hotels must also comply with the food standards code. Our scheduling advice differs depending on the size of the hotel. For example, PestOz typically recommends 6 weekly treatments for hotels with an active food and drink premises, while smaller and quieter hotels might be advised to have 6 monthly treatments.
Strata
Individual tenants are responsible for eradicating pests if the problem occurs after they moved in. If the property was not in a safe and hygienic condition when the tenant moved in, they might be able to argue that the owner is responsible for the infestation. PestOz recommends that landlords schedule pest control services at least once a year and before the arrival of new tenants.
The body corporate is responsible for providing pest control for all public areas of a building. PestOz recommends scheduling yearly pest control treatments.
Warehouses and factories
Non food related warehouses and factories typically schedule quarterly pest control treatments.
Retail stores
Non food retail stores typically schedule their pest control treatments every 6 months. We conduct these treatments outside of retail opening hours so your customers won’t be affected.
It’s important to remember there is no hard and fast rule or law about when to schedule pest control treatments. Our advice is based on experience and is governed by whether there is an active pest problem or history of pests in your premises.
If you’re prone to forget scheduling pest control for your home or business, why not book your next pest control service when your service specialist pays you this year’s visit? You may find you need a call back sooner than this but we hope our service was effective enough for this not to be the case.