Service Area → St. Elmo

St. Elmo

We're in St. Elmo multiple days a week, and Dan lived on Tennessee Avenue for a few years before he started Pest Tech. Most of the houses are about 100 years old, tucked into the valley at the foot of Lookout Mountain, and they come with old-house bugs: smokybrown cockroaches, ants, and termites. Like anywhere else, we start with an inspection.

What are St. Elmo houses like?

Most of St. Elmo was built between about 1910 and 1940, much of it in the 1920s. A lot of the houses are Craftsman style, many of them two stories, on brick foundations and brick piers with a crawlspace underneath. Most have been remodeled several times, and plenty went through a rough stretch somewhere along the way.

Much of the neighborhood is a historic district, with city rules for changes to the outside of a house. That's a big part of why St. Elmo still looks like St. Elmo. It also means not many replacement windows get approved, so a lot of houses keep their original ones, gaps and all. When bugs are coming in around an old window, we treat the outside of it, in the cracks and crevices where they crawl in.

Why are there so many smokybrown cockroaches?

St. Elmo sits in a valley, with the wooded slope of Lookout Mountain on one side and Hawkins Ridge on the other. (The sun even sets a little early here, behind the mountain.) All those woods are full of ants and smokybrown cockroaches, and the big trees in the neighborhood drop leaves and seeds on every roof.

Smokybrowns like to live up high and outside: in clogged gutters, under the eaves, in the cracks of a brick foundation. Second-story gutters packed with leaves are a favorite, and they're a pain to keep clean. When the weather changes, the cockroaches look for a way in, and a 100-year-old house has plenty. They've been St. Elmo regulars for a long time.

That's what Regular Service is good at. We treat around the outside each season, where they live, so fewer of them make it inside. You may still see one now and then, but it makes a real difference.

Do St. Elmo houses need termite protection?

Most St. Elmo houses we inspect have some old termite damage. Active termites are less common, and old damage on its own isn't an emergency. But termites are clearly around, and brick piers and double-brick foundations have plenty of cracks they can tunnel up through. Nobody knows which old soil treatments are still working and which are long gone.

So in St. Elmo, our usual recommendation is termite bait stations as prevention: foraging termites find the stations in the yard before they find the house. We also diagram the old damage and reinspect every year, so we can tell if anything changes. Since we're in the neighborhood multiple days a week anyway, it's easy for us to keep an eye on things.

What about mosquitos?

If you need help with mosquitos in St. Elmo, we have a few different methods for different situations, including options for sensitive yards. One is In2Care stations, which go after the places mosquitos breed instead of treating the whole yard. Mosquito control also goes further when a couple of neighbors sign up together.

What are the little holes in my floor joists?

Usually powderpost beetles. They're a fairly common find in St. Elmo crawlspaces that were damp at some point. The tiny holes are where adult beetles chewed their way out of the wood. They need damp wood to come back, so we measure the moisture in the joists. In a crawlspace that's dried out, the holes are often old news.

If the wood is damp enough for them, there are two ways to stop them: treat the wood itself, or dry out the crawlspace and keep it dry. We do the wood treatment. For drying out a crawlspace with encapsulation (a heavy vapor barrier) and a dehumidifier, we'll point you to a contractor we trust.

What's the neighborhood like?

St. Elmo is almost all houses, with a small business district at the north end and the bottom station of the Incline Railway, which still carries tourists up Lookout Mountain. People here know each other, and a lot of the neighborhood's talking still happens on its email list, where you'll find everything from an old Honda for sale to a neighbor asking for help. It's also how a lot of our St. Elmo customers found us, maybe more than any other way.

St. Elmo Porchfest and the Luminaria festival in December are both run by a neighborhood volunteer group, the St. Elmo Stroll, and Pest Tech has sponsored both. Plenty of Dan's old professors and classmates from Covenant College call St. Elmo home.

Neighbors in St. Elmo say

“We've been using Pest Tech since 2021 and they've been great. Our more recent technician is awesome. They show up when they're supposed to and text if they're going to be delayed. And their pricing is competitive.”

“Hiring Pest Tech was one of the best things we did after buying our first home. They are very professional, dependable, readily available, SO knowledgeable and we have seen amazing results. I could go on and on! I highly recommend them to anyone in search of a pest control company.”

“We are thrilled with our interaction with this company! Our four legged family members love Dan! Their knowledge of biology and chemistry, coupled with a balanced environmental awareness is a comfort. And best of all, our six- and eight-legged unwelcomed guests have all been served notice.”

“Pest Tech is great! Dan does a great job at assessing the best way to protect your home. His availability and customer service made him really stand out from the other companies.”

We're referral-based. If you send a friend or neighbor our way and they start Regular Service, your next invoice is on us. Just text us.