After taking a week off, I got off my ass and decided to tackle my ant problem again. I decided to concentrate on the bathroom front because that’s where I think I’m closest to solving the problem. I’ll worry about the kitchen later.
After sealing off a ton of gaps, I am still seeing three or four ants underneath my bathroom sink. There are obviously points of ingress I am missing. I now have some heat-resistant tape, so I used it to seal around the incoming hot water pipe that comes out from the wall. I used regular tape to seal around the cold water pipe.
I have a lot of silicone sealant left, so I sealed off a whole bunch of other gaps that are underneath the sink as well. My theory is that behind my whole bathroom sink cabinet, the ants have basically established a beachhead there. They’ve come up from the unit below via the water pipes and via gaps between the bathroom sink cabinet and the walls, they are getting into my apartment. The bathroom sink cabinet itself has gaps, which I’m trying to seal up.
Once I sealed up a whole bunch of gaps, I sat there, just observing, trying to seeing new ants and where they were popping up from. I looked away for a like second and when my gaze returned, I saw an ant near one of the front corners of the cabinet. Where the hell did it come from? It didn’t spawn from thin air. It also didn’t drop down. So it must have come from somewhere near by. I got down real low and put my head down near the floor and tried to look up from below the cabinet. It was then I realized there was a massive space at the bottom of the cabinet between the cabinet wall and the wall of my bathroom. I’m not describing it correctly but suffice to say, it was a void space that could theoretically be open all the way to the back of the cabinet, the opening of which was probably two inches by half an inch. It was in a really awkward spot, so even if I had sealing foam, there’s no way to get a dispenser in there. What I could use was duct tape. I had to use a small mirror to help me guide the tape but I sealed it off.
I’m still not done because now that I know what I’m looking for, I discovered yet another set of gaps that open up into the back of the sink cabinet. By then, I was just so tired and wanting to eat fried chicken that I decided to call it quits for the day. I had made progress, so it was time to be just happy about that.
The battle continues.