Walk the perimeter like a mouse
Twice a year · typically April and October
Why it matters
Pest control that works is mostly carpentry: animals and insects get in through openings, and the openings are findable. This walk is you finding them before October's first cold night sends every mouse in the yard looking for a warm wall cavity. This is a different errand than your termite mulch-line task — that one manages soil and wood contact; this one hunts holes in the shell itself.
What skipping it costs
$300–$4,000
Mice need a dime-sized gap; rats a quarter. Once inside, they chew wiring (the electrical-fire risk nobody prices in), shred insulation for nests, and turn an attic into a remediation job. A rodent cleanup-and-exclusion runs $1,500–4,000. The dime-sized gap it came through seals for about four dollars of copper mesh.
Two ways to get it done
Do it yourself
You'll need: Flashlight, Mirror on a stick (or your phone camera) for under things, Gloves, Copper mesh or steel wool + sealant for gaps (~$15), 1/4-inch hardware cloth for vents (~$12), New garage door bottom seal if daylight shows (~$40–80).
- Circle the house slow, at knee height — pest-eye level. You're looking for any gap a dime fits in: where siding meets foundation, around every pipe/cable/AC line entering the wall, dryer and exhaust vents, under stoops.
- Seal gaps with copper mesh or steel wool packed in, THEN sealant over. Foam or caulk alone is a chew toy; metal mesh is the actual barrier.
- Weep holes in brick: screen, never seal. Push-in stainless weep covers keep mice out while the wall keeps draining. (Caulking them shut trades mice for moisture — a worse tenant.)
- Vents — dryer, crawlspace, gable — get their flappers checked and 1/4-inch hardware cloth where screen is torn. Chimney: confirm the cap and its mesh are intact.
- Garage door: close it and look from inside for daylight, especially the bottom corners — the most-used mouse door in America. Replace the bottom seal if it's gapped.
- Inside evidence check: droppings or chew marks along garage walls, under sinks, around the water heater. Fresh sign means this walk just became this week's job.
Hire it out
$125–$350National fair range — local labor moves this number.
A one-time exclusion service — find and seal everything, professionally — runs $125–$350 and is honest money for an active problem or a complicated house. Get the sealed-points list; it's your map for next year's walk.
The recurring quarterly contract is the thing to interrogate. There are houses that earn one — heavy-pressure areas, food businesses, chronic issues — but the default answer for a sealed house is no. "Exclusion first, bait where needed, spray last" is the order of operations an honest outfit will say out loud. If the pitch starts and ends with a spray schedule, you're buying their route density, not your pest control.
Ask the tech
- Show me every entry point you're sealing — I want the same list you have.
- Exclusion first, bait second, spray last — is that your order of operations too?
- If you're recommending a recurring contract: what specifically about MY house needs quarterly treatment?
Red flags you're being upsold
- The quarterly spray contract as a default answer. Perimeter spraying is a subscription ($400–600/yr, forever) that mostly treats the lawn's feelings — most houses with sealed entry points don't need one. This is the pest industry's maintenance-plan money machine.
- Sealing weep holes shut. Those brick gaps are drainage your wall needs — the right answer is stainless weep covers or mesh, never caulk. A 'pro' who caulks weep holes is creating a moisture problem to solve a bug problem.
- Fear-tour selling: photos of OTHER houses' infestations, urgency about nests they can't show you at yours.
Second opinion time: Any treatment plan over $600, or anything sold as urgent that they can't physically show you.
The call
DIY the walk and the sealing — exclusion is caulk-gun work, not chemistry. Hire a one-time exclusion job for an active problem; sign a quarterly spray contract almost never.