Cedar is often considered the gold standard for rot and insect-resistant wood trim. Cedar is a softwood that performs better than most pressure treated woods. While cedar does resist these issues, it isn't necessarily the best material for use on every home.
Best Flooring to Prevent Bed Bugs
Flat flooring with no cracks offers far fewer places for bed bugs to hide. Carpet is, therefore, better than wooden flooring in this regard. Thicker carpet is also more difficult for them to walk over.
Oil-Based Polyurethane
For years and years, oil-based polyurethane was one of the most sought-after types of hardwood floor finishes, for several reasons. This type of finish is great for high-traffic areas, such as hallways, offices, or homes with children and/or pets.
Most Durable Vinyl Flooring
This type of flooring is especially good at fending off wear, dents, scratches, discoloration from sunlight, and stains—making it appropriate flooring for high-traffic areas.
Luxury vinyl flooring is an excellent option for home use. It can be used to achieve the look of hardwood floors in wet areas at home, and hold up to heavy foot traffic, drops, and spills in any room.
Despite being the best choice for underneath floor heating, hardwood flooring is not exceptional when it comes to hardwood pest infestation. Some wood pest such as termites, powder post beetle, carpenters ants, and some bugs may cause irreparable damage to your wood floors, making them spotty and aged.
Carpets cracked walls, and furniture can all offer hiding places for bed bugs that live in laminate flooring. When you clean the surface flooring, some bugs may be able to flee and hide and then return to the infested floor when the chemicals evaporate.
Water-based borate wood preservatives have been adapted for log homes during the past 20 years after having proved themselves for more than 50 years in Europe, Australia and New Zealand as effective deterrents against termites, beetles, carpenter ants and wood-decaying fungi.
Bed bugs do not like to climb or stay on smooth plastic materials. Placing small items in plastic containers or in sealed heavy-duty plastic bags will prevent bed bugs from infesting the items. In an infested home, placing clutter in plastic containers will make bed bug elimination efforts easier.
Bed bugs hate scents such as lemon scents, cinnamon oil, neem oil, spearmint, and silicone. They will hide from you when you use these smells.
Easy-to-clean tile and stone are typically the go-to choices, because neither trap dust mites, pollen, dander and other airborne particles that aggravate allergies.
Lemongrass, citrus, peppermint, eucalyptus, tea tree, citronella, catnip, and lavender oils all possess properties that repel bugs.
Peppermint. Peppermint essential oil might just be the holy grail of natural pest repellents to leave around your home's entry points, as it can help keep away ticks, spiders, roaches, moths, flies, fleas, beetles, and ants. Use sachets of this oil near your doors and windows or try making a diffuser or spray.
Don't install your laminate on any floor with a drain. Don't install laminate on any uneven subfloor or outdoors. Don't install your laminate over residential carpet. Don't install a second layer of laminate underlayment.
Unlike wood flooring, vinyl plank is impervious to termites. This material is shock absorbent and comfortable to walk on. This flooring can be installed on top of your subfloor as long as the subfloor is in good condition. The best part about vinyl plank is that it is an affordable option when looking to renovate.
Both Pine-Sol and Lysol are safe to use for laminate floor cleaning, and they disinfect as they clean too! There are several commercial disinfectants that are safe to use on laminate wood floors.
From the attic to the basement
Next time you climb the stairs, remember that insects, too, prefer lower levels. Survey findings revealed that as floor numbers increase, fewer types of insects thrive. Larger rooms, especially on the ground floor (or even below ground), harbored more insect diversity.
Oil leaves a residue, furniture spray creates a slippery surface (think ice-skating rink!) and wax takes time to apply and makes re-coating difficult. Don't use straight ammonia, alkaline products or abrasive cleaners.
You may love the look of your hardwood flooring, but it's really not a good idea to put it in your laundry room. Foyer– All manner of things can be tracked in from outside, and the foyer of your home will bear the brunt of all of them. Sand, dirt, mud, water, snow, and more can all damage hardwood.
While LVP is extremely durable, it isn't totally indestructible. Luxury vinyl flooring can dent and even scratch or scuff, especially from heavy appliances, furniture, or other weighty objects. Just because it's resistant to something doesn't mean it's impervious to it.
Yes, mold can grow under vinyl flooring if moisture becomes trapped underneath the flooring material. Vinyl flooring is not a breathable material, which means that moisture cannot escape through the flooring.
Due to the materials used in the production process of vinyl, it will sometimes emit various levels of VOCs into the air for a short amount of time after installation. These toxic chemicals can be harmful to air quality of the immediate environment it's installed in and may cause respiratory problems over time.