Recently, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about house centipedes, the alarming critters that we featured as our Halloween monster last year. You can click on the link for more information about what draws these creepy critters to East Tennessee homes in the fall, but they reminded me of another pest control option that we at Russell’s Pest Control would like to share with you. Have you heard the news about probiotic bio foam? That’s quite a mouthful for a title. Nonetheless, Russell’s technicians have recently added these foaming cleaners to their tool kits, and they’ve had some great results.

The reason that house centipedes reminded me of bio foam cleaners is because you often find those many-legged monsters in your drains. Sometimes, centipedes may come up through drains, and sometimes they may get stuck near drains because they climbed up the side of the tub or sink, fell in, and then couldn’t climb back out. Either way, there are plenty of critters that are interested in eating the muck that builds up inside of drains, and house centipedes could be very eager to eat some of those critters. Even if bugs weren’t very interested in drain scum (which they are), no one really wants it there. It’s unappetizing and can house bacteria with a powerful punch.

Probiotic foams are a great tool to combat drain scum. The product that Russell’s uses is a thick foam that has been laced with microbes—mostly bacteria—that hungrily eat other microbes and bacteria that they encounter. In other words, it uses the strategies of bad bacteria against them. The good microbes in our bio foam are happy to continue to reproduce as long as food (i.e. drain scum) is present. Once all of the junk is gone from the drain, the good bacteria die of starvation, leaving you with a clean drain. There are no chemicals in this foam; in fact, using chemical cleaners shortly after the foam will end its effectiveness because you could kill all of the little microbes that are working for you!

Probiotics have loads of good uses. Because this product is a foam, it will fill up pipe entrances to thoroughly clean around drains. Restaurant owners can quickly name dozens of places where they could benefit from this sort of product in their busy kitchens. The foam also includes a citrus ingredient, which helps to eliminate odors even as the microbes eat the bacteria that cause the odors. Foam in the bottom of a stinky trash bin can leave the kitchen smelling fresh again. And, because there are no chemicals in the foam, it won’t bleach carpets. You can use it to get up food stains and pet stains.

Now, we don’t just spray this stuff willy-nilly. The foam has bacteria in it. Even though these bacteria are better than the ones we’re getting rid of, we still won’t use it on food preparation surfaces, inside the refrigerator, etc. We follow the label to the letter so that we’re using this cleaner in the most effective way possible. In fact, we would be happy to set its cleaning power to work for you. There are options for that. We can add foam drain cleaning to a regular pest control service for a small fee, which means our technicians handle foaming when it’s needed during their regular quarterly or monthly visits. This can be done for homes or for businesses. In addition, our customers can purchase cans of probiotic foam from us to use—according to the label—when needed. Again, this product is not a harsh chemical, which means homeowners can apply it by themselves after reading the usage instructions (which is a smart thing to do for all cleaners anyway).

If any of this sounds interesting to you, you can always contact us online or give us a call. We’d love to partner with you keep your home safe and clean and to keep the crawling critters out!

Bio Foam And Centipedes in Knoxville TN

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