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Not always. If you are clean and your neighbors clean then it's usually fine.
In the building I am in now, I have seen them in the lobby. But I live on the 5th floor right now and never saw one in my apartment. My apartment before this was on the 5th floor and we saw one once in our apartment but I also saw them in the lobby there. We were all traumatized when we encountered one in the apartment, especially my 7 year old. The building before that was the 27th and I never saw one anywhere in that building.
It will kill them all and is 100% human safe you can even eat it.
Roaches travel in the walls and come out wherever there's an opening. To completely block them you need to caulk all the baseboard, the door trims inside and out, and everywhere under the sinks and behind the stove / fridge everything
I would treat it like any pesticide, although it is organic and not harmful.
Get the kitchen grade variety. I wouldn't recommend eating it.
Shake it behind your appliances, under your sink, under your stove....at your door sills, near those areas you mentioned holes had been.
It is actually microscopic ground up sea shells. It will take a week or so for you to notice a huge difference because it kills by dehydration attaching itself onto the outer skeleton of bugs ....and the bugs will carry it into the nests and it works really well.
You can usually find it at home improvement stores in the gardening area....or try the pest control area also.
The other thing that I've used, Chinese chalk. Go to a Chinese store and ask for it. You draw a line on the floor outside in front of your door sill or any sill that you do not want bugs to cross over. I do not think that Chinese chalk is as harmless to humans as diatomaceous earth however, you'll have to research that yourself.
Is this a problem on these floors in most buildings? I'm moving into a second floor apartment!
It's only a problem in a building with an infestation. The worse it gets, the higher up in the building you will see any pest as the population increases. Other factors that can make the problem worse are the age of the buildings, especially if the underground areas and plumbing have not been very well maintained, and how close the building is to water.
I dealt with this problem so I understand how awful and stressful it is. In my first NYC apartment. Granted, at the time I was living with roommates and didn't have as much money invested.
We had them in the kitchen mostly. An exterminator would come out the second Saturday of EVERY month. I should have known then to run. They would be gone then for a week or two, then slowly came back. At that point, I was eating all of my meals out so it wasn't really affecting me. It pissed me off I couldn't use the kitchen but I made the best of it.
However, a few months in, it got worse. I kept my bedroom and the shared bathroom beyond spotless, bleaching the floors, scrubbing the baseboards, making sure to never have any water laying in the tub. It was meaningless. The roaches one night came into my room around like 3-4 in the morning. There were literally SCADS of them. I am not kidding when I say like at least 40-50.
I remember crying, knowing I had to get up for work at 6 and I wasn't going to sleep. I felt helpless, like there was nowhere for me to run. They had literally crawled up the canopy mesh on my bed. I still have nightmares thinking about that.
For me, what I did was talk to my employer and see if I could use a few days sick time while I got the situation sorted out. Luckily, they were very understanding. I broke my lease and left the next day while everyone else was at work, left a note and the key on the table and that was it. Nobody should have to live that way. It is NOT a livable situation and some buildings never really eradicate the problem.
Eastbound - your story gave me the willies!!! I couldn't deal with that and I understand why you left!! Just seeing one a year makes me so paranoid anxious and crazed out!! I can't imagine 40 in one night!! Where were they coming from???!!
water bugs come from plumbing issues. Being close to the basement could be a cause of the problem. Water bugs can come up from the sink/bathtub or other drain pipe. Boric Acid powder can be a solution you can try. line behind the fridge and sink drainage pipes.
Is your apartment near the trash? Does the basement have any open drainage holes?
It is nasty, but even in the worst building I have lived in , I would only find 1 at a time. These bugs are normal in Florida, but look like a roach on Steroids to us NYers.
An exterminator would come out the second Saturday of EVERY month. I should have known then to run. .
Monthly exterminators are standard in NYC buildings. It actually is not a good or a bad sign that there's a monthly exterminator. We have one for my coop building and actually the board spends a fair amount of time trying to convince more people to sign up for it. They consider it "maintenance."
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But I live on the 5th floor right now and never saw one in my apartment. My apartment before this was on the 5th floor and we saw one once in our apartment but I also saw them in the lobby there. We were all traumatized when we encountered one in the apartment, especially my 7 year old. The building before that was the 27th and I never saw one anywhere in that building.
