Pest control in Marietta  ›  General pest control  ›  Woodstock

This page covers what general pest work involves in Woodstock, the newest housing stock in this hub and the one most often assumed not to need any. Start with the Marietta pest control guide for the whole method, then read this for the local part.

1  New is not the same as protected

The most common assumption in Woodstock is that a 2005 house does not have the problems a 1965 house has. It does not have the same ones. A slab house has no vented crawlspace, no pier bases in damp soil and no original heart-pine framing to soften, and that genuinely removes a whole category of work.

What it adds is a continuous sheltered gap running right around the house, between the slab edge and the brick veneer. Odorous house ants use it as a ring road. They nest in the bed material and in the veneer void, then cross into the house at the sill, under door thresholds and at the places where pipes and cables pass through. You almost never see the nest, only the trail, which is why killing what is on the counter changes nothing. Crush one and it smells of rotten coconut; that smell is the identification.

Georgia also sits in Termite Infestation Probability Zone 1, the highest rating issued, and a slab house is not exempt from that either. Age changes the shape of the work, not whether it is needed.

2  The landscaping is the problem

Subdivision landscaping in Woodstock follows a pattern: a bed running the full width of the front, shrubs planted close to the wall, pine straw or mulch refreshed every spring, and an irrigation zone that waters all of it. Twenty years of annual top-ups later, the bed material sits above the brick ledge on a lot of houses, which hides the one line a technician most needs to see and puts constantly damp organic matter in direct contact with the wall.

Irrigation makes it permanent. A zone running three mornings a week keeps the soil band against the footing damp through the whole dry part of summer, which is exactly when that band would otherwise bake out and become inhospitable. North Georgia already has no dormant season, only a slower one; an irrigation controller removes even the slow part.

Three changes do more than any product: pull bed material back below the brick ledge, turn the heads so they water plants rather than the wall, and keep a hand’s width of bare soil along the foundation so a treated band actually lands on soil. That argument, in full, is in the complete guide.

3  Where the water collects around Towne Lake

Woodstock was built out on land that was cleared and graded, which means the drainage on your lot is an engineered thing rather than a natural one. Towne Lake and the Noonday Creek corridor sit at the bottom of that engineering, and the swales and detention basins that feed them run between houses. Those swales were cut in compacted red clay, which slumps and settles, so a lot that drained correctly in 2005 may not drain correctly now.

That is why a correct job here still starts outside with a slow lap of the foundation, reading grade and drainage before anything is applied. Where does the ground slope back toward the house. Where does a downspout discharge into a bed instead of past it. Where does the patio sit level with the slab so water stands against the wall. On a slab house those questions replace the crawlspace inspection; they do not disappear with it.

German cockroaches are the indoor exception in Woodstock as everywhere else. They live in the warm wet walls behind kitchen and bathroom plumbing and need gel bait placed in the harborage itself, with a vacuum and a follow-up. An exterior band never reaches them, and a repellent baseboard spray scatters them into adjoining voids.

4  Nearby towns in this hub

5  Questions

Jaylan Jones — Cobb County Pest Solutions publishes independent guidance for North Georgia homeowners. We are a referral service, not a licensed pest control contractor, and we do not perform the work. How we work.