One Bite at a Time

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June 1, 2009

By: Austin Frishman

The complexity of servicing high-rise structures is exponentially compounded compared to servicing 100 or more single residents.

Pricing strictly on square footage and in treating every area on the same frequency won’t work. Some areas need more work than others, so you may schedule the kitchen area twice a week and the basement, where paper goods are staged, for monthly service.

The same is true with examining exterior rodent control devices. Some areas need more frequent attention than others because of weather conditions, rodent activity or human destruction. History will tell you what is needed.

Major Items to Know

Apartment buildings — Are they co-op, rentals, leases, time-sharing? Are they multi-purpose buildings (businesses plus apartments)?

Knowing the answer to those questions will determine whom you must deal with and who has the authority to make pest management decisions.

Security Systems — You must find out several things about a building’s security system. For instance: What type of system is it? Which doors have alarms?

Are guard dogs used? Who’s in charge of security and what procedures are mandated before you can start work?

Roofs — Find out if this particular building is working on a green program and has installed gardens or ponds.

Is the roof divided so each section is owned by a given apartment owner? Are solar panels or other expensive devices in place? Is there a water tank present?

You’ll also need to know if you can walk on the roof and what the cleaning program is for this area. Find out if rodent control devices are needed.

What vents to the roof? Are they screened or covered?

Languages — The occupants of the building may speak three or four different languages, and most of the building management people may speak a fifth.

Whatever the language involved, it’s important to have literature written in the appropriate languages.

Recycling Program — As more and more municipalities mandate recycling, the storage of these materials presents new challenges for pest management professionals (PMPs). Garbage is no longer burned in incinerator shoots. Newspapers are held for a week or more — even wrapping paper, cardboard, cans and glass are stored — which requires monitoring each of these areas.

Mosquitoes — Elevator pits, Bromeliad potted plants, air conditioning, drip pans, standing water on the roof, rain gutters and sump pits — these all need pest management programs. The mosquitoes that transmit West Nile virus breed in these environments.

Flow Patterns — Some items are always brought to the same area of a building, left to sit for various time periods and eventually channeled to different areas. As an example, toilet paper can go from the loading platform to a basement storage area to mobile wagons to the many custodian closets and, eventually, to all the public restroom areas.

Each area I refer to as a HACCP (hazard analysis critical control point) that needs to be monitored with sticky traps. The same is true with fluorescent bulbs, hand towels and commercial soap. Keep these flow patterns in mind when setting up your pest management program.

Keys — Who has keys to what? When are the people available to either give you a key or accompany you? Superintendents generally have keys to apartments. Someone in the maintenance department has keys to air handling rooms, mechanical equipment rooms and sensitive areas. Custodians have keys to custodial closets. Someone in the main kitchen has keys to food-storage areas (in commercial buildings housing a cafeteria-like facility).

Then there is the executive security who has the only key to the pantry. There is one more area that nobody on premises will have the key to: the telephone room. You have to make an appointment with the telephone company to be able to get in. This is not necessary on every visit, but it’s necessary for the initial set up and probably once a year depending on pest pressure surrounding the room.

Lines — Vertical and horizontal lines in wall voids serve as highway for several pest species. The most common lines are plumbing and electrical lines. Television-cable and security-system wiring function the same way. Mice, rats, American and other peridomestic cockroaches, German and particularly brown-banded cockroaches run along these wires and disperse from apartment to apartment. Even bed bugs will move to adjacent apartments this way.

Laundromat

Building laundromats are usually located in the basement. In here, you have to watch for Oriental and American cockroaches coming up from the sewers and drainpipes.

You also have to be aware of a new pest that’s reappearing: bed bugs. People are told by PMPs to bring bed bug-infested clothes to the laundromat and wash them in hot water — now we’re inviting everyone with bed bugs to bring them to the laundromat.

Remodeling and Renovation

Within high-rise structures, a single apartment or entire floor may be gutted and redesigned for a new tenant. If a pest problem already exists at this time, you can expect scattering of the pests into adjoining floors. If none exist, you can expect the construction workers will create their own conducive conditions. If food and beverage trash are not picked up daily or, worse yet, allowed to be thrown anywhere, fruit flies are sure to come. Be prepared to access and inspect those areas.

When a new high rise is under construction, don’t wait for it to be completed before initiating a pest management program.

The Exterior

When attempting to set up an integrated pest management (IPM) program, you must stand back and look at the building from afar. You can simply walk around the building, but it helps to have an aerial prospective as well.

Why do pests invade a structure? Run the reasons through your mind while inspecting heat reflected from the building, smells from cooking odors, type of vegetation and debris immediately adjacent, color and elevation of property or doors and windows left open.

Exterior Lighting — Such lighting usually serves a two-fold purpose: safety and highlighting a sign or a structure. In most cases, the lights are mounted directly over doorways. This draws the insects into the building. In hospitals, pharmacies and food plants, you can resolve this problem by installing floodlights at the edge of a parking lot and beaming it at the building. The lighting still is sufficient for security and or advertising, but the insects fly to the lights in the parking lot instead of into the building.

Setting up and doing pest management in a high-rise structure is like eating a huge sandwich: You have to look at it from the outside, see what’s inside and then take it in small bites.

If you don’t, the size above may choke you. It can be overwhelming unless you have a plan.

You can reach Frishman, an industry consultant since 1967 and president of AMF Pest Management Services in Boca Raton, Fla., by e-mailing mypmp@questex.com.

 

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