You can get rid of ants in your camper or mobile home by taking a number of approaches. Prevent them from accessing food and water in your home by sealing containers and thoroughly cleaning.
Use non-repellent ant baits and sprays to slowly take out entire colonies. There are many do-it-yourself ingredients you can use to make an effective bait. You will want to erase the scent trails by confusing them with essential oils or mixes of water with soap, lemon juice, or vinegar.
If ants are in your walls, use baits to find the nest then contact an exterminator or use boric acid to kill the ants in the nest.
Why Are There Ants In Your Camper/Mobile Home?
Ants, like other pests, are after three things. They enter your camper or mobile home because they are looking for food, water, or shelter.
How To Get Rid Of Ants In Your Camper
First you need to keep ants from finding food and water in your home. Then you need to seal entry points and make a barrier. Use non-repellent ant poison so the ants take the illness back to the colony. For lasting protection, use ant bait and destroy colonies as you find them.
Get Rid of What Attracts Acts
The first step to getting rid of ants in your camper is eliminating access to the things they are looking for: namely food and water.
Store food in air-tight containers. Make sure your bread, chip bags, cookie jars, sugar bowls, and candy jars are all securely sealed. You want to prevent ants from detecting the food and gaining entry. If they find food, they will tell the other ants in the colony and lead them to it.
Try to eat food in only one room of your home. This will make it easier to contain and clean up after crumbs.
Ants can live off of the grease and food spills they find in your kitchen area. Clean around your stove and kitchen appliances, including your microwave, toaster, and fridge. You should also take out, empty, and clean the drip tray from your fridge.
Empty and clean your kitchen cabinets. Ants are able to get into cardboard packaging and any boxes or bags that are not tightly closed. Cleaning your cabinets helps to clean away any crumbs or food particles that ants might have been able to find.
Clean your kitchen area every night before bed so ants will find nothing during their nighttime foraging hunt for food. This means clean your countertops, seal away all food, wash the dishes, clean the floors, and wipe up any crumbs on your table.
Crumbs can easily find their way onto your floors. Be diligent and sweep or vacuum the kitchen and vacuum the rest of your home’s floors. Crumbs and food particles may be resting on your furniture as well, so do a deep clean by using your vacuum’s brush attachment and using disinfectant.
Get rid of and clean up after any ant bodies in your home. These remnants attract more ants thanks to pheromones.
Cover your pet food containers or tightly seal these. You may not think of them as food, but the ants will.
Food remnants in and around your trash can will attract ants. Keep your garbage cans clean and take out the trash frequently, closing the lids on all containers inside and out if possible.
Get rid of water sources for ants by fixing leaks in your plumbing and drying your sinks and showers overnight. Put any wet dish rags directly in the wash or seal them overnight in a bag. Empty pet water dishes overnight if you can.
Seal Off Ant Entry Points
It can be tricky to find out where the ants are coming in. Check your windows and doors frames for cracks and crevices.
Seal around window frames, door frames, and baseboards to prevent ants from coming in, along with anywhere else you noticed them entering from. If there are holes around wiring or cable pipes, seal around them with copper mesh.
Indoor Ant Bait and Spray
The important part about using chemicals is picking ones that the ants will take back to the colony. That means choosing non-repellent sprays and ant bait. Ants will avoid walking through poison, but not if the solution is non-repellent.
Use both a liquid and granular ant bait. Place the bait where you have seen ant activity. Most kits include bait plate stations that you can put the bait in.
Bait can be placed in cabinets, on countertops, near sinks, around cables that come out of the wall, and any other places you have seen activity. If you have pets, carefully check the instructions to ensure their safety.
Another option is to use cornmeal as bait, which will expand inside the ants when they drink water and will kill them.
Sometimes ants will ignore bait (which is either protein or carbohydrate based) if they already have a stable food source. That is why we recommend also spraying indoors to help solve your ant problem.
Use a non-repellent spray around the inside of your doors, windows, and baseboards. The ants do not detect the spray so they walk through it and it sticks to their bodies. They then carry it back to their nest.
Most non-repellent formulas are intentionally made to delay the kill. After several days or over a week, the ant will have shared the poison with its colony. A significant portion of the colony will be affected, fall sick, and die.
To use the spray, direct the straw applicator into the crevices and cracks you find around baseboards, windows, and door frames or other areas you noticed ants coming in from.
Outdoor Sanitation
You need to make it harder for ants to access food, water, and shelter around your mobile home or camper.
You don’t want ants to get anywhere near your foundation. Create a six-inch area around the perimeter of your mobile home or camper to clear of all landscape material. That means get rid of leaf piles and turn any mulch regularly so insects don’t build their nests close by.
Keep your trash bins as far away from your home as you can. The more distance you can put between the food waste and your home entrance, the better. Wash out the trash bins with an ammonia solution when needed.
Clean out the gutters on your mobile home frequently so you don’t get standing water built up to attract insects.
If you can, park so that trees and bushes do not touch your home. This will help limit entry.
Outdoor Ant Spray
Using ant bait and spray outside of your mobile home or camper will help to keep them from entering.
Use a non-repellent spray around the perimeter of your home and around your windows, door, and cables or pipes. Spray one foot around the home and one foot up the exterior walls of your home. You can also spray areas where you have seen ants crawling on the building.
Locate ant hills and spray directly into the holes. You can find ant holes by watering your lawn and seeing where the ants escape. Wait around ten minutes to watch for any holes you did not see the first time.
Like other non-repellent products, the ants will crawl over the sprayed area and bring the poison back to their colony to infect the others by engaging in social interaction. These solutions will take several days to over a week to kill the ants.
With many of the solutions available, you need to get a sprayer and mix the determined amount into a gallon of water. Spray only every six months or so.
Outdoor Ant Bait
Ants will go after the ant bait depending on what nutritional needs they are trying to meet. Some baits are full of protein and others are based on carbohydrates. You should use both to maximize the chances of reaching your ant colony.
Baits also come in liquid or granular form, and we recommend using both types. The bait you purchase will come with bait plate stands to hold the bait. Place some of each within the stand, near an area you know your colony visits regularly for food.
You can make a DIY ant bait by mixing one cup of water with ten teaspoons of white sugar and two teaspoons of Boron powder (Borax). You can make your own bait station by using a plastic container (such as a sauce cup) with holes punched into the sides.
The liquid stations will dry in the summer. Be sure to check and refill them regularly until you are confident your ants have been exterminated.
How To Get Rid Of Carpenter Ants In Camper
Carpenter ants follow the trails left by fellow carpenter ants to lead them toward food. They often build their nests in nearby walls.
Set out a sweet bait to attract your carpenter ants. Once they eat it, watch them while they travel back to their nest.
For a DIY bait, mix baking soda with sugar in equal parts and place this mixture in a shallow dish. The ants will be attracted to the sugar but be slowly killed by the baking soda.
Carpenter ants leave scent trails pointing to the source of their food. You will want to destroy these scent trails. Wipe down the trail areas with essential oils, a mixture of one part dish soap and two parts water, or a mixture of half white vinegar and half water.
Once you locate the nest, drill ⅛” holes every six inches in the area where you think the nest should be. Puff boric acid into the holes using a bulb duster.
Call in an exterminator if you want professional help or are weary about drilling into your wall.
How To Get Rid Of Ants In Your Camper Walls
You will know that ants have nested in your walls if you find piles of dust or wood scraps, if you observe ant trails leading into the wall, knock and hear hollowness behind the wall, see ants coming out of your wall, or hear insect activity behind your walls.
To get rid of ants in your walls, the first step is to get rid of entry points. Follow some of the steps described earlier in this article and seal all cracks and crevices around your doors, windows, and baseboards.
Erase ant trails next. You can do this by using essential oils to wipe down the area. You could also use a mixture of half vinegar and half water or one part lemon juice to three parts water. Ants that leave the nest to forage will have difficulty finding the food source.
You can also attempt to repel ants with the scent of some common pantry items. Try using peppermint, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, black pepper, or bay leaves in the areas you have noticed the ants visiting around your camper.
You can use non-repellent ant bait that the ants will pick up and take back to the nest. This will kill more of the colony in several days’ time.
If you contact a professional exterminator, they will be able to tell you which type of ants are living in your wall and how best to get rid of them.
Can You Ant Bomb A Camper?
Yes, you can use an ant or bug bomb in your camper. However, you need to take several precautions for your safety and to protect your camper. The chemicals in bug bombs are flammable, so you need to disconnect from electricity to be safe.
Disconnect your propane and batteries, solar panels, or other items that can spark. Make sure the pilot light on your stove is off, disconnect from the power line, and temporarily disable your smoke and carbon monoxide alarms.
Remove any food, including pet food and dishes, that you do not want to come in contact with the chemicals.
To help reduce the mess, place the bug bomb in a bucket before setting it off. Follow all instructions to proceed safely.
Recap
You don’t need an exterminator to take care of the ants in your camper. Simply cut off their supply of food and water, seal all crevices, and try to prevent entry. Then erase their scent trails and use non-repellent ant baits and sprays to kill entire colonies.
If you have carpenter ants or other unidentified ants in your walls, you can follow their trails to find the nest. Once this is located, exterminate them with boric acid or consult a professional.
Sources
- https://mobilcountryclub.com/how-do-i-keep-ants-from-invading-my-mobile-home/
- https://www.domyown.com/how-to-get-rid-of-ants-a-462.html
- https://www.countryliving.com/home-maintenance/cleaning/a32663773/how-to-get-rid-carpenter-ants
- https://ants.com/how-to-get-rid-of-ants-in-walls/
- https://www.doityourselfrv.com/beating-ants/
- https://www.thesavvycampers.com/can-you-bug-bomb-your-rv/
