Chances are that when you go outside at night during the warmer months of the year, you will hear the distinctive chirping of crickets. The sound that crickets make is one that most people know of, even if they don’t regularly see crickets.
This becomes a problem when you begin hearing the iconic cricket chirping coming from inside your home. Crickets, the same as most other insects, are pests and can cause damage to your house if they are not taken care of; as such, they do need to be taken care of.
If you know that you are hearing cricket chirps coming from inside the house, you might begin to wonder where they are coming from, especially if you are careful about leaving doors and windows closed when you know that it is insect season.
The truth is that there are many ways that crickets can enter your house, meaning that you have to be even more careful about them.
Typically, crickets will find a way to enter your home no matter what precautions you take, and the only real way to make sure that they can’t get into your home is if you live on the upper floor of an apartment in a city where crickets are not common.
Since this is not a feasible solution to cricket prevention, you should make sure that you are aware of how crickets can enter your home and what you should do if you find one inside.
How Do They Get in?
Crickets are incredibly stubborn insects and will find a way into your house no matter how much you try and keep them out. They can get in your house through vents, windows, doors, foundations, crawl spaces, and especially basements.
If you are planning on making your home as sealed off to crickets as you can, you will want to try several different methods that apply to each of the different kinds of openings crickets go after. This includes investing in screens for windows, doors, and vents as well as making use of a caulking gun for openings in the foundation.
Chances are that if you have an entry point in your house, a cricket will use it to enter your house as your home will be comparatively warm and safe when you look at it against their usual outdoor habitat. With this being said, the three most common entry points for crickets are windows, doors, and vents.
To seal off these entrances to crickets, you will want to make use of insect screens, storm doors, and similar objects. These objects are designed to keep bugs and weather out of the house while still allowing for airflow, making them quite a good method of keeping crickets from entering when you want to have the windows open at night.
Crickets will also come in through cracks in the foundation and walls. They will also find a way into your home through the plumbing and electrical openings in your house as well as dryer vents.
For cracks in the foundation and walls, you will want to walk around the house and inspect it, using a caulking gun to seal up any and every opening that you can find. You may need to contact a professional if there are holes found in the walls that a cricket could access.
There are products designed to safely seal plumbing and electrical openings that you can invest in if you want to be certain that crickets cannot enter the house through here, and there are also specialized dryer vent screens that you can safely use.
If your house has a crawl space, an attic, or a basement, you will need to be thorough about making sure that this is closed off as well, as these are prime entrance areas for crickets looking for a comfortable place to make their home during their most active seasons.
To make them less appealing to all insects, and not just crickets, you will want to try and keep those areas as dry as you can too.
It can be difficult to fully seal off crawl spaces, attics, and basements; however, with the use of a caulking gun and a keen eye, you can feel confident knowing that most areas of entry will be sealed off.
In a worst-case scenario, you can make sure that openings too large for a caulking gun are sealed or covered with furniture or another solid object that a cricket wouldn’t be able to get through.
By following through with all of these methods, you can make your home as unappealing to crickets as you possibly can. There’s still a chance a cricket could enter the house, as they are stubborn insects that seemingly find a way into perfectly sealed homes, and if this ends up happening to you, you will want to take the appropriate measures to remove the crickets from your property.
Getting Rid of Crickets in the House
There are numerous species of crickets that will willingly make themselves at home inside your house, and there are many methods that you can use to get rid of them.
The first thing that you will want to do when you know that you have crickets inside your house is to try to identify what kind of cricket you have, as this will make it easier to know the best deterrent method, though if the cricket is stuck inside the walls or vents, this may not always be possible.
There are two main categories of methods that you can use to get rid of crickets, and those are chemical methods and organic ones. As the name might imply, chemical methods involve the use of repellents, pesticides, and insect killers to forcibly deter the insects from making a home as they will die out, while organic methods use natural ingredients or objects to remove the insects from the house.
Chemical methods are quick and effective, but sometimes too effective to the point of being bad for you to interact with and potentially deadly for pets. Organic methods may take a little bit longer and may not result in the death of the crickets, but are safer for you and your household animals.
Different species of crickets will respond to various methods of getting crickets out of the house, which is why it tends to be very helpful to know what kind of cricket you are dealing with.
A good example of a chemical solution would be using a cricket bait with a killing agent in it to kill off the crickets that are attracted to it, and this is one of the most common methods of killing crickets in crawl spaces, attics, lawns, basements, and other areas with pretty easy outdoor access.
They are rarely used inside, though, as you don’t necessarily want to give outdoor crickets a reason to come inside.
A good example of an organic solution is to simply use a vacuum. Most areas of the house that crickets can get in from will benefit from a thorough vacuuming anyway, and this is a method that is completely safe for you and any other animals that you have in your house.
Depending on the strength of the vacuum and what attachments you may have, it can also pull crickets from cracks in walls, baseboards, crevices, trims, and underneath carpet, as well as removing their eggs as well.
This is also a solution that is extremely accessible, though it can be made more effective through the purchase of a HEPA filter.
For cases when you know that there is more than one or two crickets making noise in your home, you may need to turn to the heavy hitters of insect removal. This will often be a chemical solution, though there are organic deterrents and killers; however, they are not recommended for heavy infestations.
Insecticides are best used when you know that the house is infested and you need to get rid of the crickets any way that you can. It has a wide range of application and will almost guarantee that the crickets in your home will be dead and that other crickets won’t be too keen on entering a building knowing that their cricket friends died in it.
The biggest problem is that insecticides are harmful for the environment and often house pets, meaning that you have to be pretty cautious about using them, especially if you have pets inside the house.
If you are worried about being safe while making use of an insecticide and you have an infestation, you may want to consider asking for a quote from an exterminator or a pest control service so that you can weigh your options there.
And finally, once you are certain that the crickets in your house are gone, you will want to opt to do some preventative care for your lawn and property. If crickets don’t want to come to your lawn, there’s a much smaller chance that they will come close enough to your house to find it an acceptable place to live.
There are forms of both organic and chemical preventative maintenance that you can make use of, with some forms of organic maintenance designed for use in gardens and around delicate plants.
I have a bachelor’s degree in Computer Information Systems and over 10 years of experience working in IT. As a homeowner, I love working on projects around the house, and as a father, I love investigating various ways to keep my family safe (whether or not this involves tech). I’ve also played guitar for almost 20 years and love writing music, although it’s hard to find the time these days.