FAQ's
Answers to your most common Patio Patrol questions
Service Visit Questions
No, our goal is to let you relax. After successfully treating thousands of yards, we've gotten pretty darn good at finding our way around. All we ask is that we can access your yard, and have any neighborhood gate codes and that your pets are safely inside for the day.
The short answer is every 18-24 days.
The long answer is treatment frequency is based on a wide variety of factors, including product preferences. We strive to be adaptable to all environmental factors that can impact a pest population. For example, the weather is a huge factor in speeding up or slowing down the mosquito life cycle: if it's warm and damp, we treat it more frequently; if it's very hot and dry we treat less frequently. Our goal is to treat your yard with as few chemicals as possible, but enough to be effective. We don't believe in standard schedules since it can lead to too few visits which won't control pest populations or coming too frequently and over-spraying chemicals.
It depends. If you're home and you'd like to chat about mosquitoes, we can take the time you want to provide additional education. But yard size and landscape density have the most impact on time spent at each house. As a rough estimate, a half-acre lot without much shrubbery or foliage can take about 15 to 20 minutes; a 2-acre lot with dense shrubbery and foliage can take a half-hour or more. But truthfully, we take as much time as we need to ensure we are protecting you and your family in your yard - and never at any extra cost to you.
We do not rush to get every visit done in 10 minutes. We are intent on providing the best possible service on each and every visit. Each service visit can vary in time, and application - however long it takes. We serve and target critical areas where pesky pests may be hiding, and we'll use a hand-held sprayer if need be for hard-to-reach areas to ensure the protection of your entire yard. We also include a home perimeter treatment to ensure outdoor pests stay - well - outdoors. Additional services like wasp traps, mosquito traps, and bait traps can be provided as needed.
We price based on the size of the yard and how dense your Landscaping is. The ALL Natural Option is a bit more expensive as it costs more than the non-natural products (as it requires a more frequent application close parentheses. After estimation will give you a price that will run for the duration of the season in your area. You can choose a seasonal package or a per treatment option. The choice is yours!
We don't nickel and dime either... Charging more for tick control or other bad bugs. We don't charge if you need us to come back to retreat your yard, or if you need an additional treatment prior to a party.
Our goal is simple: to give you a single, reasonable rate to handle most of your annoying outdoor pests. Isn't that the way you would do things if you were us?
Seasons vary greatly by region.
If you live in the Southern United States, you should expect your season to start in February / March and end in November / December. If you're in the northern part of the United States, your season will typically start later in April or early May, and end in October.
Typically, mosquito season starts when the average temperatures rise above 50 degrees for three consecutive days, while ticks and other pests can start buying at even lower temperatures; and go Seasons 10 to end once the first Frost hits your area. Our panel of bug experts (entomologists) let us know when mosquitoes, ticks, and other outdoor pests start becoming active.
Because outdoor pets are active at slightly different times each year (depending on how warm the winter is or how long Autumn stays warm and damp close parentheses, we determine the exact seasonal start and stop times each year in real-time. But this is for us to worry about. Just know that we're on it and will handle those pesky pests no matter when they come out.
Treatment and Product Questions
The town doesn't Target any specific home yard, and they only really Target adult mosquitoes during their active periods. Since most mosquitoes can only fly 150 yd from the place they were born, targeting your yard specifically is critical as we can bring the population down to almost zero mosquitoes. And due to the high-quality products we use, our treatments are more effective for longer periods of time. Be on killing the adult mosquito, we also Target than at the egg, larva, and pupil stages. It takes an egg approximately 10 days to become a biting adult. We cannot stress enough the importance of targeting the early portion of mosquitoes' life cycle.
Patio Patrol also spent significant time searching for mosquito larval habitats. Mosquitoes can lay hundreds of eggs in a very small amount of standing water; up to 200 eggs can be found in a soda bottle cap! By eliminating or treating standing Water sources, we further reduce the possibility of mosquitoes developing in your yard... As well as reducing the insecticides that need to be used in future visits.
No, your backyard and enemies are safe! Our technicians go through extensive training on the proper spring techniques including use of smaller, hand-held sprayers for treating yard areas with pools, ponds, and gardens. By using the special hand-held sprayers, we not only avoid sensitive areas in your yard, but we also ensure your yard's treatment is effective and efficient.
We have found yards are mosquito and tick-free anywhere from 2 to 6 weeks after treatment. This 4-week variance depends on a number of factors, including weather, proximity to an untreated neighbor's yard, use of all natural products, and success in finding and eliminating larval habitats. No matter how long a treatment lasts, Patio Patrol will be back to keep your peskiest pests away.
Yes! We offer an all natural option that consists of rosemary, thyme, and wintergreen essential oils. This All Natural option will eliminate mosquitoes on contact and acts as a repellent after it dries. In order to be effective, the all natural treatment needs to be applied more frequently and therefore has an additional cost.
At Patio Patrol, we use an integrated approach to control mosquitoes and other pests - what we believe to be the most effective methodology. An integrated control plan includes barrier spraying and standing water treatments to assist in the elimination of larval habitats, targets pests during their early life stage, killing both active and resting adults, and surveilling to instruct how to proceed with treatment in the future.
Patio Patrol's treating philosophy does not include misting systems or CO2 traps, as we believe both are relatively ineffective and potentially dangerous. Misting systems kill only a small portion of the mosquitoes on a property, yet spray insecticides at a regular schedule (whether or not it's needed) and are unable to detect if pets or people are nearby when the system sprays. CO2 traps typically burn liquefied petroleum gas to produce the carbon dioxide, and are designed to be left operating and unattended, which can also be dangerous.
Philosophy, Beliefs, and Other Buzz
We started Patio Patrol to do things smarter. We don't want to be the company that uses the cheapest products or rushes our technicians from job to job. Our goal is to be thoughtful in everything we do. We never premix treatment solutions as we found that the mixture ratio changes depending on when sprayers are filled during the day. We would also rather use a smaller hand-held pump sprayer to control overspray and get into tighter and more targeted areas around your home (even if it's easier and faster to use a larger backpack sprayer) Most people won't know the difference... but we do. Patio Patrol might not be the least expensive but we price our services fairly and do the job right.
We love bees... at least the kind that don't sting and help pollinate flowers. Our technicians are trained to spray in such a way as to limit impact on pollinators. We also use specially formulated products. So don't worry, you'll still notice those friendly little bees buzzing from flower to flower.