Pests That Can Delay Your Office Renovation

Checking spaces for these common pests and eliminating them can help keep facilities clean and safe

By Luqman Butter

Sooner or later, every company needs to renovate and polish up their business premises. Since it takes time and money to renovate an office, it’s important to plan the entire process in advance. One of the prerequisites that ensure a smooth renovation is checking the entire space for pests. If you don’t eliminate them on time, they could slow down, or even delay the office renovation.Pests

Here are five common pests that appear in offices and how to handle them on time.

Rats And Mice

Rats and mice, i.e. rodents in general, can be a real nuisance for business owners. They can litter the entire office with their droppings and turn it into a mess. Also, if a rat or mouse dies somewhere behind your office cabinet, the odor will repel both your workers and potential customers.

So, before you start with the renovation works, inspect the entire office space for mouse holes, cracks, and droppings. If there are any traces of their presence, react at once. Both rats and mice are capable of moving through very tight spaces, and with more and more people starting to work from home, their ventures into office buildings have grown rapidly.

For starters, distribute humane mouse traps around the office, especially behind the cabinets, desks, and bulky pieces of furniture. If you’re in the process of renovation, place them around construction edges, joining points, cracks, vents, drain pipes, anything that looks like an entry point into your office.

Moving large furniture away from walls can also help to uncover their pathways and nests, and will allow you to spot any other unwanted residents.

Woodworm

Woodworm is a pest that affects wooden furniture and other office areas built of wood, such as flooring and roof. It usually gets into the office in second-hand wooden furniture, like coffee tables and armchairs. When it comes to wooden furniture, woodworms can get into brand new items as well, especially if they’re not properly treated with wormwood-killing products, painted and polished.

If you see small holes – up to 2mm wide – in your furniture or floor, and small piles of sawdust around them, you most likely have woodworms. Once larvae become beetles, they leave the furniture in question. Still, it doesn’t mean they’re gone for good. There might be more eggs inside the furniture, or beetles can come back to lay their eggs.

Since you’re preparing your office for renovation, apply heat treatment and other options for eliminating woodworm. Also, get some polish that exterminates insects and coat the infested furniture.

Additional two cents: avoid buying second-hand wooden furniture for your office to prevent issues with woodworm.

Cockroaches

Cockroaches like dark and damp places, and if there’s any food or other waste lying around it is sure to attract them.

Business owners renting an office in an older building need to pay special attention to these insects. The last thing you need is one of your clients spotting one of those nasty bugs walking around.

If you’re suspecting a cockroach infestation, you can do a simple test. Pull down the shades and keep the lights off for a few minutes. Leave some breadcrumbs or other similar food leftovers on the floor to attract the cockroaches. When you turn on the lights, you’ll most likely see cockroaches on the floor, given that there are any such pests in your office. You can also use some sticky tape planted near sources of food, to confirm your suspicion.

Regularly check the space behind the cabinets, tables, refrigerators, together with warehouses or any storage rooms that you might have in the office.

If you spot any cockroaches, install several cockroach traps to remove them as soon as possible. Not handling cockroaches at once will lead to a more severe infestation that will be harder to handle. Cockroaches are infamous for quick reproduction and for transmitting different diseases, so it should be your goal to do everything you can to deal with them immediately.

Additional two cents: seal all the cracks and holes that you see on the office walls, by the office doors and windows, or any other office areas.

Termites

Termites usually attack wood, cellulose, plants, and cardboard. They alone cost U.S. residents around $5 billion annually in damage caused.

This means that a business office is like a buffet table for these insects. They will destroy your desks, file cabinets, files, and plants if you don’t handle them on time. Not to mention the damage they can do if they get inside your walls, windows, doors, and flooring.

Anything made of wood is a target for them, and you need to look for signs of infestation regularly. Some of the most common ones are: wood that is swollen, blistered, or buckled; droppings in the shape of pellets, mud tubes (mostly on walls), or hollowed wood—this isn’t a visible sign and can only be discovered by knocking on the surface; if you do notice it, it’s definitely a good reason to have it checked.

In case you notice any sign of these pests in your office, call a pest exterminator immediately and have them removed without any hesitation. That way, you’ll save a lot of time and money that you’d otherwise spend repairing the furniture, walls, or creating new versions of destroyed business files.

Conclusion

Pests are common tenants of office spaces. Business owners need to regularly inspect their premises to keep their property clean and safe. Pest infestations don’t have to become a huge problem, but they require fast identification and action. If proper measures aren’t taken, they can lead to serious infrastructure damage and the spread of disease.

Keeping the office clean is the simplest and most effective way to avoid those problems and any additional costs once you start the renovation. Also, you don’t have to deal with them in the middle of the work, meaning that you’ll save both time and money if you keep a pest-free office.

Luqman has been a pest control technician for over 20 years. He is passionate about solving people’s pest and wildlife control problems through innovative, eco-friendly, and humane methods. Luqman currently works for Pestend Pest Control Barrie.

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