Mosquitoes Are Using Your Clogged Gutters as a Vacation Home. Mosquitoes love open-style gutters clogged with water, wet leaves, and other debris. In fact, a significant percentage of mosquitoes in your neighborhood are bred right at home, in your wet rain gutters.
Vegetable oil, like olive oil or corn oil (1 teaspoon per gallon of water), will suffocate mosquito larvae quickly. Apple cider vinegar added to water is another way to kill them, although it takes a little longer and requires a higher concentration of vinegar to get the job done.
Because clogged gutters hold plenty of stagnant water, they are an ideal habitat and breeding ground for biting disease-carrying mosquitoes.
Mosquitoes rest in dark, humid places like under sinks, in showers, in closets, under furniture, or in the laundry room. Mosquitoes entering your house from outdoors can start laying eggs indoors.
Storm Sewer Systems
These structures require maintenance to ensure that debris does not accumulate in the storm drain grate or the storage area allowing mosquito breeding. Sometimes the only practical means of mosquito control involves the use of insecticides to kill the larvae.
Empty, drain, or cover all surfaces that hold standing water. It can be a pot, old tires, an empty bottle, buckets, or a pool. Empty all containers and cover them so that they won't fill up again when it rains to prevent mosquito larvae from swimming in them.
Pour vinegar and baking soda into the drains and flush with hot water to kill any mosquito eggs.
The easiest and most obvious place to build a nest is buried in the leaves of plants, and that means they can often nest in grasses, in flower beds, in overgrown shrubberies, and more.
There's a high chance of mosquito activity if your property is near standing water with a constant water source. Mosquitoes could easily enter your home and lay their eggs; female mosquitoes will lay eggs in water for survival. House plants are also known to attract mosquitoes inside the house.
If your property has even the smallest amount of water for them to breed in or the types of plants that hold drops of water, then your property is at risk. If you spend a lot of time outdoors with your family during the evenings, then you could very well become a mosquito target.
Once colonized, the control gutters without a gutter guard had the lowest mosquito abundance (P < 0.001), and the metal lock-in gutters had the highest abundance (P < 0.001). The results suggest that if standing water exists in a gutter, gutter guards are not an effective tool for mosquito control.
The undisturbed, fresh water will attract mosquitoes straight to your home. The same goes for bird baths--these provide a source of shallow, stagnant water for mosquitoes to lay their eggs in.
Mosquitoes love stagnant water, meaning water that does not flow or circulate. Your kiddie pool is the perfect breeding colony for those nasty pests.
Clogged Drains
When drains and gutters go uncleaned for long periods of time, leaves, twigs and other debris create blockages that trap water. These clumps of debris form the perfect home for mosquitoes because they supply them with protection from the wind as well as a source of collected standing water.
Trash cans will likely attract mosquitoes because the garbage will just sit and pile up. Also, trash cans tend to pool small amounts of water either from rain or the trash itself, and that is something that mosquitoes are very attracted to. Dark and damp spaces are breeding grounds for mosquitoes.
Once they get indoors, mosquitoes can survive up to three weeks… which is longer than they generally live outdoors. Worse, if a pair ends up inside or a female lays eggs inside your home then you could wind up with a series of mosquito generations inside your home.
Use an indoor insect fogger or indoor insect spray to kill mosquitoes and treat areas where they rest. These products work immediately, and may need to be reapplied. When using insecticides, always follow label directions. Only using insecticide will not keep your home free of mosquitoes.
As such, most mosquitoes rest or sleep in a dark, sheltered place during the daylight hours, preferably an area that is relatively humid, such as tucked inside vegetation like plants and grass.
If the rain gets particularly heavy, mosquitoes do seek shelter. They will often hide under the backside of leaves until the rain lets up. They also search for dark places where they can be protected from falling rain. This shelters them and protects them from drowning during periods of heavy rain.
So when the sun is out in full force most mosquitoes search out and rest in cool places, waiting for the evenings. Sheltered places like brush, thick weeds, caves, rock shelters, holes in the ground, hollow logs or holes in trees can all serve as potential rest stops for mosquitoes.
As mentioned above, mosquitoes can live in bathroom and laundry drains, and they might especially prefer drains that aren't flushed out very often. If you suspect that mosquitoes have been living or laying eggs in a drain in your home, there are a few things you can try to eliminate them.
A larvicide is a type of insecticide used to control mosquitoes indoors and outdoors around your home. They work by killing mosquito larvae before they can grow into adults.
The length of the mosquito breeding cycle varies by species, but mosquitoes generally need 10 to 14 days to develop in standing water. Insect control authorities often recommend dumping any standing water at least once a week.