Why Roaches in Bathroom- At Night, Baby & Adults- Get Rid & Prevent
Roaches are black or brown insects with a flattened body that make their way into the bathroom because it has a damp, moist and warm environment suitable for their breeding. To get rid of these insects, you can bait them and also set traps for them. Read on for more details.
What are Roaches?
Roaches are nocturnal insects that have a flattened oval body with long threadlike antennae and also have a shining black or brown leathery integument or in other words outer body covering.
The heads and mouth parts of these insects point backwards instead of forward, which is unique and different from the other insects. Cockroaches are the other name for roaches. This name comes from the Spanish name cucaracha.
Why are there Baby and Adult Roaches in my Bathroom?
The cockroach prefers a warm, humid, dark environment which is the main reason they invade your bathroom. It provides all this for them.
Baby and adult roaches may be in your bathroom due to several reasons and things that attract them during the day and during the night.
Although it is very rare to see cockroaches during the day since they are nocturnal insects hence are more active during the night. They dislike light.
These reasons include:
Water: there are various sources of water in the bathroom. Bathrooms are damp places, and hence cockroaches may drink from these sources present in the bathroom, be it from your shower, toilet, or even the sink.
Good Hiding Spaces : bathrooms provide perfect hiding places for roaches. Cockroaches understand that they are prey animals. They hence tuck themselves into hiding places when there’s any activity from larger creatures.
Bathrooms offer many hiding places, such as cabinets, behind the toilet, in trash cans, shelves present in the bathroom and products on the shelves. Furthermore, the areas of the shower, beneath the bathtub and even the smallest hole is accessible to a roach. Some species can squeeze through holes 1/6th their body size.
Heat: Your shower creates a steamy, warm environment on a semi regular basis if it’s a hot shower. Cockroaches thrive in warm climates. If other areas of your home are cold, the bathroom may seem like an ideal place for them to live and thrive in.
Potential food: Though less ideal than a kitchen, bathrooms provide alternative food sources. This may include:toothpaste, soap, toilet paper, skin care products that contain chocolate, cream, or even mud, used sanitization items, like ear swabs or feminine hygiene products.
Darkness: In most parts of the house, windows are open, and the lights are on. In contrast, bathrooms tend to be dark. When there is less human activity, roaches are alone and undisturbed. That’s just how they like it.
As you can see, bathrooms are a paradise for cockroaches. If they have an opportunity to nest themselves into this space, they may. That can leave you wondering how they managed to get in.
Where do Roaches come from in the Bathroom at Night?
When it comes to roaches in the bathroom at night, they always come from the sewer, window frame, beneath the door, and cracks in the wall. For places like cracks in the wall, cockroaches lay eggs, and it hatches, thereby leading to more roaches in the bathroom.
Cockroaches may also come into the bathroom through and from the drains which are present in the basin, bath, or even shower. It is easy for cockroaches to appear coming from this area as it has water and is not easily accessed by humans.
Gaps around your window frame allow cockroaches a way into your home.
A toilet is an entry point into your bathroom for a cockroach, and it also offers them a source of water. Roaches do not live in water, they can hold their breath for long periods of time. More than long enough to traverse your drain system and exit through your toilet.
Where do Roaches come from in the Bathroom during the Day?
Cockroaches enter bathrooms during the day by crawling up through drains, finding gaps in baseboards, squeezing through leaky pipes, through sewage lines, over electrical lines sliding under doors, and through small holes in walls or ceilings.
Sometimes, cockroaches enter through other parts of the house and travel to the bathroom, the water and humidity present attracts them.
How to get Rid of Roaches in Bathroom
Squashing
This is one of the simplest and cost free ways to get rid of cockroaches. There is a discussion on whether you should step on a cockroach if you see one.
Some believe that, by squashing a cockroach, you can release their eggs, which you may then spread all over wherever you walk and hence the eggs may mature and reproduce more roaches. You would have done zero work. This is disproven.
Moreover, there are other challenges in crushing a roach to kill it. Their exoskeletons are hard and are like bulletproof armor. Often when you step on them, they are too hard to crush and can end up running right back into their hiding spots.
Cockroaches can also play dead excellently, and sometimes even grow back some of their limbs if they are lost.
The other challenge is that this method cannot be used to get rid of numerous cockroaches; it might be tiresome or even impossible, as some of them may run away.
Bait them Out
Instead of pushing the pests even deeper into their hiding places, it can be more effective to draw them out.
Baiting is a common treatment method that works by luring the cockroaches out to eat the bait, which they assume to be an attractive food source. When they eat the bait, they ingest poison that may eventually kill them.
It works well for populations of roaches, as when one eats bait, it can spread it to others in the nest through their waste and corpse.
There are several places you can place your bait in the bathroom and these include:
- Along bathroom baseboards
- Around the edges of cabinets
- Edges of bathtub and toilet.
- Along the outside of your house where the bathroom is.
- Around vents in the bathroom.
- Around the drain in the bathroom.
- Any cracks and crevices present on the walls of the bathroom.
- Near the carpet if there is one in the bathroom.
- Under or on top of the sink.
There are several ways to trap and bait cockroaches.
Using Duct Tape
Using this strategy you simply need bait to attract the cockroaches, and adhesive to keep them there. This trap can be difficult to move once you have set it, but it is a simple trick, and you may yield a high reward for relatively little effort.
- Get a roll of duct tape. Make sure that the tape is fresh and sticky to prevent the roaches from escaping.
- Choose your bait. You can use anything with a powerfully sweet or oily smell such as an onion or a small strip of fresh banana peel or sweet, overripe fruit or even a small piece of bread.
- Place the fruit, onion, bread, or whatever you chose as bait in the middle of a length of your sticky tape. Make sure that it is stable, and that it may not fall over.
- Leave the tape in an area where you’ve been finding numerous cockroaches in the bathroom, maybe a dark corner, or near a hole in the wall, under the sink, bathtub or even near the carpet.
- Leave the tape where it is overnight, and do not disturb it until the morning. The sweet scent may attract the roaches, which stick to the tape as they approach.
- Pick up the tape with the roaches and throw it far away from your house.
Use a Jar,
This method is simple and easier when moving the trapped roaches.
- Find a quart-size mason jar that has a very slight bottleneck, like a mayonnaise or spaghetti sauce jar.
- Wrap masking or duct tape (sticky-side facing the jar) all around the outer surface, so the cockroaches have enough traction to climb the sides. Or you can place the jar near a small ramp or rim so that cockroaches can easily find their way inside.
- Coat the inside with petroleum jelly (like Vaseline), at least four inches down from the top. This way, the cockroaches won’t be able to get any traction when they try to climb back out of the jar.
- You might also consider mixing the petroleum jelly with gel bait to kill the cockroaches on contact.
- Put something smelly in the bottom of the jar to attract the cockroaches. A piece of banana peel or fragrant, overripe fruit works well, and some people advocate the use of onion slices. Make sure that the bait is not so large that the roaches can use it to climb out of the jar
- You can also try pouring a bit of beer or red wine into the bottom of the jar just enough to drown the roaches. Fruit juices, sweet sodas, and sugar water may also work well.
- Place the jar anywhere that you have a roach problem, and make sure that there is room on the sides for the roaches to crawl into the jar.
- Leave the jar out overnight or even for several days until it has collected a good few roaches. Eventually, pour some boiling water into the jar to kill any surviving roaches. Flush them down the toilet or put them into a compost.
Liquid Gel Bait
Liquid gel bait is hand applied using a syringe and works well for covering every crack and crevice directly.
Liquid gel roach bait is extremely attractive to roaches because it combines an attractive food source with the water source that roaches need to survive and stay alive.
When ingested, it kills the roaches and also the eggs inside them.
If you choose the liquid bait, apply dime-sized drops placed a few inches apart from each other onto the target areas. The roaches may ingest it and die.
Smoke bombs are unsafe to use in households with pets.
Bait Stations
Another option for gel baiting is bait stations. They offer some convenience compared to liquid forms and come in a small box you set on the floor without needing to hand apply it. However, the liquid bait could be a better option for fast-acting effectiveness.
Roach-Bombing
Treatment methods including smoking and using roach-bombs may be partially effective.
Using Roach bombs work by spraying a chemical insecticide into the air in a confined space.
The pesticide stays in the air for a short period before it falls to the ground, coating surfaces and potentially killing cockroaches on contact. This carries the potential of the cockroaches moving deeper into your walls and eventually returning to your bathroom once the poison has worn off.
Using Smoke Bombs
Place foggers or smoke bombs in the center of a room on a chair or table. Depressing or removing a tab at the top of the can is how to activate them.
They release the entire contents upwards, into the airspace, where the aerosol droplets remain suspended for a period of time and then gradually settle onto floors, countertops and other surfaces.
Given the manner of their application, very little insecticide actually penetrates into cracks, voids, and other hidden locations where cockroaches run into and hide. This can just create more frustration for you, as it can take even longer to treat the infestation.
Smoke bombs can also be toxic and therefore breathing in these chemicals can make you sick.
They are also flammable, since they emit flammable vapors into the air, they may cause explosions if there is a source of ignition (such as a pilot light for a water heater or stove) when released.
Preventing Roaches in the Bathroom
It is way much easier for you to prevent the infestation of roaches in your bathroom than having to deal with getting rid of them once they infest your bathroom. Prevention is better than cure.
Here are some tips that you might put into consideration if you want to prevent roaches
- Move or remove the garbage cans. The garbage cans under your kitchen or bathroom sink can attract roaches. Since they contain some remains of food or even trash items that attract roaches into your bathroom.
- Cover drains with a stopper at night. You can use rubber drain covers or metal drain screens. Cockroaches are nocturnal, so it’s most important to block their entry at night, since some come into the bathroom through the drains present in the bathroom.
- Seal any cracks or holes in the bathroom or the drains.
- Use a flashlight to locate any cracks or holes in your drain pipes. If you find cracks or holes, seal them with appropriate caulk.
- You can use duct tape as a quick fix for cracks and crevices. For a longer-term solution, use silicone caulk, plaster, or cement.
- Look for gaps around the pipes under your sink. Fill these gaps with silicone sealant or urethane foam. You can fill larger holes with steel wool or copper mesh before you seal them to prevent any entry of roaches and other insects.
- Address holes and crack present on your walls. Use expanding insulation foam to seal any spaces around the pipes where they come through the walls. This blocks any entry of roaches and other insects into the bathroom.
- Clean your bathroom drains. Rinse bathroom and kitchen drain with an approved bathroom cleaner and kitchen sink cleaner respectively to remove food particles that attract roaches and any dirt that may attract them.
- You need to keep the kitchen sink drain clean since they might attract roaches, which may later on move into the bathroom due to the warm environment present in the bathroom.
- Keep counters and appliances clean. Do not leave food on the counters or in the kitchen sink, especially overnight, as this attracts roaches.
- Fix leaky faucets. Stagnant pools of water present in the bathroom attract cockroaches. To prevent getting cockroaches, keep the bathroom surfaces and floor dry at all times.
- Cease the condensation. Wrap insulation foam and tape around any pipes that produce condensation. When you remove their water source, the roaches may go elsewhere for water.
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