What Is Wrong With My Conway Home?
30 things homeowners round here actually walk in on, and what each one generally turns out to be.
Hardly anybody rings up knowing the species. They ring up knowing what they found: sawdust on a sill, something moving above a ceiling, a bite that came with no insect attached. So this page runs the other way round, from the thing you noticed to the likely cause, and you read up on the right page instead of working through all of them. Two plausible answers is a normal outcome here, and that is precisely what a free inspection is for.
A caution before you go down the list. Getting the identification wrong is the most reliable way to waste a treatment, and with a few of these the wrong product does more than fail. Hit an Argentine ant trail with a contact spray and the colony buds, so two weeks later there are trails on two more sides of the house. Set off a fogger at German cockroaches and they move deeper into the voids, and in a duplex or a townhouse that means next door's problem now too. A swarm indoors deserves naming before anything at all is sprayed, because winged ants and termite swarmers start two completely different conversations, and only one of them involves the crawl space. Where a row names something it gets confused with, read that page first.
Do not sit on these ones
These either travel fast, carry a sting or a health angle, or get considerably more expensive the longer they are left.
| The thing you found | What that normally points to | Full page |
|---|---|---|
| Shed wings on a windowsill in late winter | Eastern subterranean swarmers drop their wings within minutes of flying, so the wings outlast the insects. All four are the same length and milky, which separates them from ant wings, where the front pair is clearly longer. Indoors, it means the colony is already under or in the house. | Eastern Subterranean Termites |
| Mud tubes climbing a crawl space pier | Workers build these soil and saliva tubes to stay damp while traveling from ground to wood. Pencil width and gritty, unlike a mud dauber tube, which is a hard smooth cylinder stuck to an open surface. Scrape a section away and check in a week for repair. | Eastern Subterranean Termites |
| Tiny round holes and fine powder in floor framing | Powderpost beetle exit holes are pin sized with clean edges, and the dust is talc fine and smooth between your fingers. Termite frass in a crawl space is coarser and packed into cracks. Pale powder that reappears after you sweep it means larvae still feeding inside. | Powderpost Beetles |
| Droppings scattered through attic insulation | Roof rat droppings are dark, slightly curved and about half an inch long, bigger than a mouse's and tapered rather than blunt at the ends. Spread over a wide area instead of piled, they mark a run in nightly use, usually along the top plate. | Roof Rats |
| Rust colored spotting on the mattress piping | Bed bug waste dries to a mark that bleeds outward into fabric and smears reddish brown on a damp cloth. Flea dirt behaves much the same way, so look along the piping and the headboard bolts for pale shed skins and eggs before you settle on an answer. | Bed Bugs |
| Winged insects swarming a porch light after dark in May | Formosan termites fly at night in late spring and pile up under lights, which is what sets them apart from eastern subterranean swarmers flying on warm afternoons. Numbers are heavy and the head looks hairy. This many at your own porch means a colony very close by. | Formosan Termites |
| A cardboard-like mass packed inside a wall void | Formosan termites build carton nests from chewed wood, soil and saliva, and it looks like layered damp cardboard. That nest holds its own moisture, so the colony survives with no soil contact at all, and treating the ground around the house will not reach it. | Formosan Termites |
| Small tan roaches behind the coffee maker | German cockroaches are about half an inch long with two dark stripes running back from the head, and they stay indoors near warmth and water. One seen in daylight means the hiding places are crowded. Skip aerosol foggers, which scatter them into voids and next door units. | German Cockroaches |
| Burning stings in a line up one ankle | A fire ant grips with its jaws and pivots, stinging again and again, so the marks arc instead of sitting singly. Within a day most turn into a small white pustule, which almost nothing else here does. Trouble breathing or swelling away from the site means see a doctor now. | Fire Ants |
| A dark speck attached behind a knee | An attached tick, and at nymph size it passes for a mole. Take fine tipped tweezers, grip where the mouthparts meet skin and pull steadily straight out, no twisting and nothing applied to it first. Note the date and see a doctor if a rash or fever follows. | Lone Star Ticks |
| Wasps slipping into a gap in the soffit | A steady stream in and out of one opening is a yellowjacket nest in the void behind it, not a paper nest you can see and reach. Do not caulk the hole. Blocked on the outside, the colony chews inward and finishes up coming out into the room. | Yellowjackets |
| A tangled web low in the corner of a garage | Black widow webs are messy and unusually strong, built near the floor in a box, a meter cabinet or under a step, with the spider hanging upside down in it. Look for the red hourglass underneath. Bites are a real health matter, so treat every hiding place as occupied. | Black Widow Spiders |
Get somebody booked in this month
No need to drop everything, but this is not one to carry over to next season either.
| The thing you found | What that normally points to | Full page |
|---|---|---|
| A fire ant mound rebuilt after heavy rain | Fire ants push saturated soil back into a dome with no opening visible on top, then pour out the moment it is disturbed. Native field ant mounds have an obvious central hole and the ants scatter rather than climb. Rain moves a colony, it does not remove it. | Fire Ants |
| Coarse sawdust collecting under a fascia board | Carpenter ants dump excavated shavings out of a nest, and the pile has insect fragments through it, so it looks gritty rather than clean. Sawdust from a drilled hole is uniform. Around a fascia this usually means water got into the board first and softened it. | Carpenter Ants |
| Brown ridged trails winding across the lawn | Mole crickets tunnel just below the surface of sandy turf, lifting soil into soft irregular ridges and cutting roots as they feed. Mole runs are far larger and push up loose mounds. Press a ridge with your shoe: a mole cricket tunnel collapses and the grass above it is dying. | Mole Crickets |
| A baseboard that sounds hollow near the slab edge | Tap along the bottom of the wall. A papery, empty note where the sound was solid a foot away means feeding behind the paint. On slab homes the way in is usually an expansion joint or a plumbing penetration, so damage starts low and out of sight. | Eastern Subterranean Termites |
| Fine powder resting on the vapor barrier below the joists | Sifted dust on plastic sheeting has fallen from something above it. Powderpost beetle dust is loose and pale and comes back after you wipe the sheeting clean. Old damage stops producing. If it keeps returning through the year, wood in that bay is still being eaten. | Powderpost Beetles |
| A musty smell rising through the floor | Air in a Horry County house travels up out of the crawl space, so an earthy smell in the hallway usually starts under the floor. Damp soil, torn sheeting and wet framing feed decay fungi and support every moisture pest, crickets and cockroaches first among them. | Ask on the call |
| Papery shed skins stuck to a crawl space joist | Smokybrown cockroach nymphs molt repeatedly, leaving thin hollow shells that keep the outline of the insect. The adult is uniformly dark brown with none of the pale marking an American cockroach carries. Skins on framing mean breeding under the house rather than a stray from the yard. | Smokybrown Cockroaches |
| Mosquitoes biting in the shade at midday | Most daytime biting in this area is Asian tiger mosquito, dark with white banded legs, resting in shrubs and feeding low around ankles. It breeds in containers rather than marsh, so the useful response is a walk around the yard tipping out anything holding water. | Mosquitoes |
| A tick with one pale dot on its back | That single cream spot marks an adult female lone star tick, the one most people find in this county. The larvae, called seed ticks, arrive dozens at a time and carry no spot at all. Every stage bites people, and they wait along shaded brush edges rather than open lawn. | Lone Star Ticks |
| Chewed wire insulation in the attic | Rodents gnaw constantly to keep their incisors worn down, and roof rats work along rafters and cable runs, leaving paired scrape marks and bare copper. That is an ignition risk, so it is not a next month job. Check the same beams for greasy rub marks showing the route. | Roof Rats |
| Small dark grains in the corner of a pantry shelf | Mouse droppings, roughly the size of a rice grain and tapered at both ends, dry and hard once a day or two old. Cockroach droppings are blunt with ridges down the sides. Grains on a shelf mean feeding right there, so packaging is already being tested. | House Mice |
Worth understanding, not worth panicking over
A nuisance rather than a threat to the building. Read up before you spend money on it.
| The thing you found | What that normally points to | Full page |
|---|---|---|
| Large reddish brown roaches indoors after a storm | American cockroaches, the ones called palmetto bugs here, live in sewers, mulch and crawl spaces, and heavy rain floods them out. Adults run over an inch long with a pale figure eight marking behind the head. This points outside to drains and mulch, not to your kitchen. | American Cockroaches |
| Itchy bites after an evening on a screened porch | No-see-ums are small enough to walk straight through standard insect screen, so a porch gives no protection at dusk. The bites burn and swell more than a mosquito bite and nobody ever sees the insect. They breed in damp marsh mud, not in buckets of water. | No-See-Ums |
| Long-legged crickets jumping in the crawl space | Camel crickets have humped backs, no wings and oversized hind legs, and they hop at whatever startled them. They cannot bite or sting. What they report is humidity, because they only build up where soil sits exposed or the vapor barrier has failed. | Ask on the call |
| An ant trail that splits into two after spraying | Argentine ants live in linked nests with many queens, and a repellent product breaks one nest into several instead of killing it. Small uniform brown workers in a wide steady column, with no mound anywhere, is the pattern. Non-repellent products and bait are what bring numbers down. | Argentine Ants |
| Mosquito larvae wriggling in a plant saucer | Those comma shaped larvae become biting adults inside about a week of warm weather, and the saucer under a pot holds plenty of water for it. Tip it out, do not spray it. Water you cannot empty, a rain barrel or a clogged gutter, is what gets treated instead. | Mosquitoes |
| A greasy smudge along the bottom of a garage door | Grime and oil rubbed off fur where an animal squeezes under the same lip night after night. A shiny, slightly raised smear says the gap is in use now rather than last year. Measure it, because a mouse fits through a quarter inch and the bottom seal is usually the whole story. | House Mice |
| Welts along a sock line after mowing | Chigger larvae climb up from grass and brush and stop where clothing presses, so bites ring the ankles, waistband and sock tops. They do not burrow, and they are gone by the time the itch starts. Nothing is left to remove, and washing skin and clothes ends the exposure. | Chiggers |
Frequently Asked Questions
What does it mean if I see shed wings on a windowsill in late winter?
Eastern subterranean swarmers drop their wings within minutes of flying, so the wings outlast the insects. All four are the same length and milky, which separates them from ant wings, where the front pair is clearly longer. Indoors, it means the colony is already under or in the house.
What does it mean if I see mud tubes climbing a crawl space pier?
Workers build these soil and saliva tubes to stay damp while traveling from ground to wood. Pencil width and gritty, unlike a mud dauber tube, which is a hard smooth cylinder stuck to an open surface. Scrape a section away and check in a week for repair.
What does it mean if I see tiny round holes and fine powder in floor framing?
Powderpost beetle exit holes are pin sized with clean edges, and the dust is talc fine and smooth between your fingers. Termite frass in a crawl space is coarser and packed into cracks. Pale powder that reappears after you sweep it means larvae still feeding inside.
What does it mean if I see a fire ant mound rebuilt after heavy rain?
Fire ants push saturated soil back into a dome with no opening visible on top, then pour out the moment it is disturbed. Native field ant mounds have an obvious central hole and the ants scatter rather than climb. Rain moves a colony, it does not remove it.
What does it mean if I see large reddish brown roaches indoors after a storm?
American cockroaches, the ones called palmetto bugs here, live in sewers, mulch and crawl spaces, and heavy rain floods them out. Adults run over an inch long with a pale figure eight marking behind the head. This points outside to drains and mulch, not to your kitchen.
What does it mean if I see droppings scattered through attic insulation?
Roof rat droppings are dark, slightly curved and about half an inch long, bigger than a mouse's and tapered rather than blunt at the ends. Spread over a wide area instead of piled, they mark a run in nightly use, usually along the top plate.
What does it mean if I see coarse sawdust collecting under a fascia board?
Carpenter ants dump excavated shavings out of a nest, and the pile has insect fragments through it, so it looks gritty rather than clean. Sawdust from a drilled hole is uniform. Around a fascia this usually means water got into the board first and softened it.
What does it mean if I see brown ridged trails winding across the lawn?
Mole crickets tunnel just below the surface of sandy turf, lifting soil into soft irregular ridges and cutting roots as they feed. Mole runs are far larger and push up loose mounds. Press a ridge with your shoe: a mole cricket tunnel collapses and the grass above it is dying.
What does it mean if I see rust colored spotting on the mattress piping?
Bed bug waste dries to a mark that bleeds outward into fabric and smears reddish brown on a damp cloth. Flea dirt behaves much the same way, so look along the piping and the headboard bolts for pale shed skins and eggs before you settle on an answer.
What does it mean if I see itchy bites after an evening on a screened porch?
No-see-ums are small enough to walk straight through standard insect screen, so a porch gives no protection at dusk. The bites burn and swell more than a mosquito bite and nobody ever sees the insect. They breed in damp marsh mud, not in buckets of water.
Nothing on the list quite matches?
Say it out loud on the phone and somebody will tell you what it most likely is. Looking costs nothing, and naming it right is what makes the treatment work.
Call (843) 896-1048