The Most Common Entry Points Pests Use to Get Inside

Well, howdy neighbors! Fred Talley here again with Faith Pest Control, comin’ to you from right here in Jasper, Georgia.

Now, we’ve talked about the warning signs to look out for, and we’ve gone over your backyard checklist. But today, I want to talk about how these little buggers are actually breaching your perimeter.

Think of your home like a fortress. Pests are the invading army, and believe me, they are excellent scouts. They will spend 24 hours a day looking for a weak spot, a crack, or a gap to sneak past your defenses. Up here in the North Georgia hills, our houses settle, our wood expands and contracts with the mountain humidity, and before you know it, you’ve inadvertently rolled out the red carpet for mice, ants, and spiders.

If you want to stop them, you have to know exactly where they’re breaking in. Here are the most common entry points I see everyday when I’m out inspecting homes in Pickens County.

1. The Gaps Under Your Exterior Doors (The Front Door Entry)

Let’s start with the most obvious one, though it gets overlooked all the time. Walk over to your front door, your back door, or that side door in the garage. Look down at the very bottom. Do you see a sliver of daylight peeking through between the door and the threshold?

If you can see daylight, you might as well leave the door wide open. A field mouse can squeeze through a gap no bigger than a dime, and a cockroach or a spider needs only the thickness of a business card. If your door sweeps are worn out, brittle, or torn from years of use, that’s entry point number one.

2. Utility Lines and Pipe Penetrations (The Hidden Highways)

Take a walk outside and look at the side of your house where your outdoor HVAC unit sits. See those copper refrigerant lines and electrical wires that go through the siding and head straight into your basement, crawlspace, or walls?

When builders install those lines, they often drill a hole that’s way bigger than the pipe itself. If that gap wasn’t sealed correctly with heavy-duty caulking or expanding foam—or if that old sealant has cracked and fallen out over time—it becomes a superhighway for mice, rats, and ants straight into your home’s interior skeleton.

3. Rooflines, Fascia Boards, and Eaves (The Attic Assault)

Up here in the mountains, we get plenty of gray squirrels, flying squirrels, raccoons, and bats. They aren’t looking at your foundation; they’re looking at your roof.

Water often gets trapped behind our gutters, which rots out the wood on the fascia boards (that’s the long board running right behind your gutter). Squirrels and rats can smell that soft, rotted wood. They will chew a tiny hole into a giant entrance within a matter of days. Once they’re past the fascia, they are living large in your insulation, chewing on your wiring, and making a mess right above your head.

4. Crawlspace Vents and Foundation Cracks (The Underbelly)

A huge number of homes in Jasper are built on crawlspaces. To keep moisture down, those crawlspaces have vents built into the block walls. Over time, the cheap wire mesh on those vents rusts out or gets torn open by a determined opossum or stray cat.

Once they tear that screen open, your crawlspace becomes a wildlife hotel. From there, bugs and rodents follow the plumbing pipes right up through the floorboards into your kitchen and bathrooms.

5. Firewood Stacks and Attached Garages (The Trojan Horse)

I love a good, roaring fire on a chilly mountain evening just