What to Have Ready Before You Call

The Four Questions That Matter Most

Nobody expects you to identify the species over the phone. What actually matters is the difference between one insect near a door frame and a dozen showing up in a kitchen at midnight -- two completely different jobs that call for two different kinds of visits.

It surprises a lot of people to get asked about the foundation before anything else. On a slab, entry points are the bath trap, plumbing penetrations, the construction joint, and the gap where the slab has pulled away from the foundation wall. Over a crawl space, the work happens under the floor entirely, with a hatch, a light, and a technician working on their elbows. Knowing which one is coming ahead of time means the right gear shows up and somebody actually gets under the house on the first visit, not the second.

A photo beats any description. Take it with something for scale next to it -- a coin or a pen -- and hang onto the specimen if you have one, sealed in a container or a bag. Half the calls in this market that come in about one insect turn out to be about something else entirely.

• What you're seeing, in your own words -- insects, droppings, damage, noise, or a smell
• Where in the property it's showing up, and how much of it -- one room or the whole yard
• How long this has been happening, whether since this morning or since last summer
• Slab or crawl space -- the whole method changes depending on the answer

What's Included in a Free Inspection

Free actually means free, and it's worth spelling out what that covers: the interior areas tied to what you reported, the perimeter of the house, the crawl space if there is one and it's reachable, the attic if it's accessible, and the yard when the problem is outdoors.

What you walk away with is the part that actually matters: an identification of what you're dealing with, where it's getting in or breeding, what's feeding it, a written scope of recommended work with a price attached, and a straight answer on whether this needs ongoing service or just one visit.

Two things are always separate jobs, and any company claiming otherwise is just charging you elsewhere for them. A wood-destroying organism report for a property sale is licensed work on its own specific form, running locally from around $75 and typically an estimated $70 to $120 on a standard house. A canine bed bug inspection, where it's offered, gets quoted separately too.

Emergency, Same Day, or Later in the Week

There are three tiers, and the cheapest of them is the right call far more often than most of the industry lets on. Emergency means dispatch right now at an after-hours rate, and it's the correct choice for anything unsafe or actively spreading -- a wasp nest blocking a door someone has to use, yellow jackets in a wall next to a child's bedroom, a bat loose in a living room, a raccoon coming through the ceiling, or a rodent chewing wiring you can actually hear.

Same day means a booked slot before today ends, at the standard rate. It fits a situation that's not dangerous but also not something you can just live with, which is what most callers actually mean when they say emergency.

A planned visit later in the week gets you identical work at the lowest price. Fire ant mounds in the lawn, a mosquito treatment ahead of a weekend, an annual termite inspection, a quarterly service, a sale report -- none of those improve by being handled tonight. If it can safely wait until morning, it's the same job for less money, and you should be told that instead of being upsold the premium slot.

Clearing Access Before the Technician Arrives

An inspection is only as thorough as what a technician can actually reach, so half an hour of clearing beforehand does more good than almost anything else you could do. An area marked inaccessible is an area that never got treated.

• Leave the crawl space hatch unlocked, with a working bulb underneath
• Open the sink cabinets in the kitchen and both bathrooms
• Clear boxes off the garage floor along the wall shared with the house
• Move firewood, mulch and stacked lumber back away from the brick
• Have the gate key or code ready before the arrival window
• Secure the dog, and mention at booking if one tends to get under the house
• Set out any previous reports and agreements on the counter

Leave the Beds Alone Before a Bed Bug Inspection

This is the one instruction people almost always get backwards, because stripping the bed feels like the responsible thing to do before company arrives.

An inspection reads the evidence exactly where it sits -- the mattress seams and piping, the label and underside of the box spring, the head of the frame, and the sheets themselves, where small dark spots and rust-colored smears tell most of the story. Wash all of that the night before and you've effectively laundered the report along with it.

So leave the bed made and the linens exactly where they are. Don't move furniture between rooms, don't bag up clothing and shift it to another bedroom, and don't spray anything store-bought. Moving things around spreads the problem into rooms that never had it, and a hardware-store aerosol scatters the population into wall voids that the real treatment then has to go chase down. Vacuum the floor if it makes you feel better, and stop there.