How Long Does It Take To Get Rid Of Cockroaches?

 

You will also want to seal up cracks in the base, openings between windows and outside walls, and unsealed places where utility lines enter the house.

Cockroaches have mastered the cracks, crevices, and dung heaps of the ground for 350 million years.  They outlived the dinosaurs, sabre-tooth tigers, wooly mammoths, and countless other species.  But while cockroaches have been a long time, it does not take long to get rid of them when they invade your home.  And that is a good thing.

To prevent new infestations from the other trillion cockroaches crawling the ground, take a few preventative steps:

The first thing to do when you spy on a roach is resist the need to spray it using aerosol insecticide.  This may kill the roach you see but probably drive the ones that you don't see deeper into your walls and floorboards.  Instead, you want to feed your new pets with roach bait that includes a mix of food and insecticide.  The poison in roach bait stations, killing bait strips, and killing gels takes approximately 24-hours to kill roaches that eat it.  The creatures live long enough to take the bait back to the colony and share it with their nest mates.  In what's called a secondary kill, roaches who haven't even darkened your doorstep end up stomach up. 

                        Small roach picture

Get rid of roach food like newspapers, fabric, and books stored in boxes.

While this work might take longer than actually getting rid of your primary cockroach problem, it will save you problems down the road. 

Clean up your kitchen, paying special attention to concealed grease and crumbs under the fridge and between the counters and stove.

When they are on your abode, cockroaches leave a path of fecal matter and spit to mark their trails.  They contaminate food with lethal Salmonella and Shigella bacteria.  Decaying cockroach corpses become a fine powder that causes allergies and asthma attacks.  If you see a cockroach or three, then you're likely have hundreds--or thousands--residing in a nearby nest.  But if you act fast before the populace has taken hold, you might be able get rid of cockroaches inside a week to ten times.  And most of them will be gone in a day or two.