Cockroach control in Port Elizabeth

You can get rid of cockroaches properly, but not with a can of spray. The cockroaches you see on the counter at midnight are a small part of the population; most are packed into the warm, dark gaps behind the stove, inside the fridge motor housing and under the sink. Clearing a home or business in Port Elizabeth means getting a treatment into those places and coming back for the next generation. That's the work we do every day across the Bay.

First, which cockroach is it?

Two species cause nearly all the cockroach calls we get, and they need quite different handling.

German cockroach

Small, tan, with two dark stripes on the shield behind the head. Lives indoors, almost always in kitchens and bathrooms, and breeds extremely fast. The female carries her egg case until it's nearly ready to hatch, which protects the eggs from most treatments. If you're seeing small cockroaches in daylight, the infestation is already big. In flats, restaurants and takeaways, this is the main problem.

American cockroach

Large, shiny, reddish-brown, and capable of short flights on warm nights. Lives in sewers, drains, manholes, outbuildings and damp areas outside, and comes in through floor drains, under doors and up waste pipes. It's the one that makes people scream in the bathroom at night.

We sometimes come across other species in garages and gardens, but treatment always starts with knowing which one you have.

Why Port Elizabeth suits cockroaches

Warm, humid and without frost. Cockroaches like it the same way we do. Our coastal climate keeps them breeding through winter, especially indoors where it's warm around appliances and geysers. Older buildings in the city have extensive drain and sewer networks, perfect for American cockroaches. And the number of flats, student digs and shared buildings means German cockroaches move freely between units through service ducts and shared walls.

Food businesses are the other big factor. Wherever there's a commercial kitchen, a bakery, a packaging line or a food warehouse, cockroaches will try to get established, and they arrive in cardboard boxes and crates as often as they walk in.

Signs of cockroaches

• Dark droppings like coarse pepper, or small brown smears, in drawers, on hinges and along the top edges of cupboard doors
• Empty, brown, bean-shaped egg cases behind appliances or in cupboard corners
• A stale, oily smell in cupboards with heavy infestations
• Shed skins in cracks and crevices
• Live cockroaches when you switch on the light at night, or in daylight if numbers are high

How we treat cockroaches

1. Locate the harbourage. We check behind and under appliances, inside motor housings, under sinks, around the geyser, in electrical boxes, along shelving and in drains and manholes outside.
2. Gel bait for German cockroaches. Small spots of gel go deep into cracks and crevices. Cockroaches eat it and carry it back to their hiding place, where it passes to others. This is far more effective than spraying, and there's no need to empty the kitchen.
3. Residual treatment for American cockroaches. An odourless, non-staining residual spray goes into drains, floor traps, manholes, gaps around pipes and along outside walls.
4. Follow-up. Because German cockroach egg cases are protected, a second visit catches the young ones that hatch after the first treatment. For heavy infestations, there may be more than one follow-up.

You can stay at home during treatment. Keep children and pets off sprayed surfaces until they're dry.

Flats, body corporates and landlords

Cockroaches don't respect unit numbers. If one flat in a block is treated and the neighbours aren't, the survivors simply move next door and come back later. For blocks of flats and student houses, treating every unit and the common areas, refuse rooms and service ducts at the same time gets far better results. It also costs less over time than repeat call-outs to individual flats.

Restaurants and food premises

For commercial kitchens, cockroach control has to be ongoing. We set up a scheduled service around your trading hours, inspect and treat the high-risk areas, check deliveries and storage, and record every visit so you're ready for an inspection.

The mistake we see most

Using a bug bomb. It sprays a fine mist across the room, kills a few cockroaches in the open, and drives the rest deeper into walls and appliances. Worse, many sprays put cockroaches off eating bait. If you've already sprayed or fogged, let us know so we can adjust where and how we bait.

A tip for PE homes

Put the plug in the bath and close the shower drain cover at night. American cockroaches come up through drains from the sewer, and in older homes the floor traps can dry out in summer, leaving an open path. Pouring a jug of water into rarely used floor drains every week keeps the water seal in place.

What does cockroach control cost?

It depends on the species, how big the infestation is, and how big the property is. A small number of American cockroaches coming up the drains is a quicker job than German cockroaches throughout a kitchen. A whole block of flats or a restaurant on a regular schedule is priced differently again. We'll quote once we've seen the problem.

To learn more about cockroach biology and why they're hard to get rid of, read our cockroach guide. For local pages, see cockroaches in Summerstrand flats and student digs or cockroach treatments in Walmer. If ants or other crawlers are also a problem, our crawling insect service covers the lot.

Call 087 012 5550 to book, or WhatsApp us a photo of the cockroach so we can tell you which one you've got.