With many pests such as blowflies attracted to rotting waste to feed and lay eggs, it won’t take long for an outbreak to happen if you’re away on holidays.

That’s why it’s important to empty your rubbish bins before you head off. Keep waste in tightly sealed bags in bins with well-fitted lids. It’s important to ensure that all compost is properly covered, and not left on the ground for easy access.

Reducing attractants to your yard, access points to your home and hiding spots for pests can make a big difference to the number of uninvited guests that come over while you’re away. Here’s some of our suggestions to cultivating a pest-free yard:

• Remove piles of vegetation, including nesting material such as loose leaves and twigs
• Mow your lawns regularly
• Keep bushes, shrubs and overhanging tree branches trimmed away from your roof and walls to limit the number of access points to your home
• Remove pet waste, fallen fruit, vegetables and nuts
• Store piles of wood away from your home and above the ground if possible
• Remove visible spider webs from trees, pot plants and around pipes
• Remove nesting material from your roof and gutters
• Cover outdoor furniture, equipment and shoes
• Make sure that pet food, bird and chicken feed is tightly stored away

With the ability to squeeze through the smallest and most unlikely spaces, clever pests can easily enter your home if left unchecked. The key is to regularly inspect your home for potential access points and seal them off promptly. Here’s what we recommend to deny nuisance pests an easy passage inside your home:

• Install fly or mesh screens over vents, windows and doors
• Fit weather strips around windows and doors
• Cover gaps underneath doors with draught excluders
• Inspect your home for gaps, cracks, crevices and holes and fill them with caulk, putty, expanding foam, silicone or other appropriate waterproof sealants
• Inspect your roof for loose tiles and repair them
• Seal off vents with tough, fine mesh
• Install chimney grates or caps

If you’re finding yourself being plagued by pests despite your best DIY efforts, it’s time to call in the experts. At Allstate, our licensed pest technicians receive ongoing training to quickly detect and effectively manage pest outbreaks in the safest way possible.

We’ll identify the source of the infestation, then apply a deep understanding of pest behaviour and select the best targeted, family and pet-safe physical and chemical treatments. These include:

• Aerosol sprays, fumigation and fogging
• Control dust
• Traps and baiting stations

We also offer a range of pest prevention services designed to safeguard against potential future outbreaks:

Solar panel cleaning and proofing

Providing a safe, warm place for pest birds to nest underneath, solar panels are a common source of many pest bird outbreaks. You can protect your solar panels with Allstate’s solar panel proofing and cleaning service.

Property maintenance services

If you’ve had a previous pest outbreak, it’s important to clean up the mess left behind to avoid re-attracting pests to your home. At Allstate, we can refresh your home and yard with our comprehensive property cleaning and maintenance services before you travel, ensuring that you can return to a sparkling clean, pest-free home.

Many pests rely on a source of water to thrive, so combining increase in temperature with higher levels of humidity provides the perfect conditions for many pests to flourish.

From sprinklers, backyard bird baths and ponds, overflowing pot plants, to leaking plumbing and appliances, pests are clever at seeking out sources of moisture wherever the mercury heats up.

For pests that live within colonies underground, such as subterranean termites and ants, the increased dampness in the soil will also cause a spike in population growth.

Wooden structures can also absorb more moisture in hot, humid weather. This attracts pests such as carpenter ants, subterranean termites and cockroaches.

For many pests, the hot weather doesn’t just make them more active. It speeds up their reproductive and life cycles. This means that you’ll see more pests reaching their reproductive age sooner. As a consequence, outbreaks can happen quicker in summer, and you’ll need to act fast if you want to bring the problem under control. Here are some pests that you’ll need to watch for in a summer heatwave:

• Mosquitoes mature between an optimum temperature range of 25-30 degrees Celsius
• Flies take about 7-10 days to become adults, but this is faster in hot weather
• Fleas normally develop from an egg to an adult in about 2 months, but in summer, this process can be sped up to about 3 weeks
• The ideal breeding conditions for cockroaches are 29-35 degrees Celsius