Bathrooms are always moist which provides a good environment for roaches to thrive. They will look for dark places like the drains in order to hide. Seeing roaches in the bathroom at night can easily scare anyone.
Roaches in a bathroom hide in outlet pipes, drainage systems, and toilet seats. They can also hide in cracks and crevices in the walls and restroom ceilings. Maintaining a clean bathroom is the best way to get rid of them.
We’ll dive in to learn more about roaches’ invasion of the bathroom and how to remove them from your space.
Causes of roaches in the bathroom
Baby roaches are small, lighter, soft-bodied, and indicate roach infestation in the bathroom. Female roaches actively reproduce and after they lay eggs, those hatch into baby roaches that continue the cycle. Soon, you have a colony of cockroaches in your bathroom.
1. Bathrooms provide good habitats
Roaches come from outside and enter your bathroom through cracks and spaces below the doors and windows, looking for food, moisture, and dark places to live. They follow pipes and wires and invade suitable sites like your bathroom with the prime ingredients they need.
Over 4500 cockroach species exist around the globe, but only 69 are in America. The German roach, American cockroach, and the Brown-banded cockroaches are the most common species found in bathrooms.
The German cockroach is small, around 0.6 inches, and has two parallel lines on the pronotum. The American cockroach has yellow edges on the pronotum. Meanwhile, the Brown-banded cockroach has two light-yellow stripes on the abdomen, sides of the pronotum, and the wings.
2. Roaches look for food in the bathroom
While cockroaches can live up to a month without food, they will need food at one point.
You may think that your bathroom has no food for roaches to feed on, but you’ll be surprised to learn that these crawlers eat almost everything they find. From soap, toothpaste, droplets of hair strands, human’s dead skin cells, plastics, and fellow dead roaches.
If you usually leave your soap uncovered, toothpaste splashed on the bathroom countertops, and never empty your bathroom bin, you must be providing some good food for these inmates to feed on, and they’ll gladly reside in your bathroom.
3. Roaches look for moisture
Your bathroom has an abundant water supply. Roaches love damp, humid places and wouldn’t mind settling in them. Many instances contribute to excess moisture in the bathroom, which favors roaches’ invasions. Excess moisture comes from:
- Water droplets on the floor
- Wet sinks and surfaces
- Dump shower drains
- Leaking pipes or pipes with gaps in between
- Over-watered soils from bathroom live plants
- Water condensation issues on the bathroom walls
- Wet bathroom mats
- Dump and wet towels
4. Roaches look for dark warm hideouts
Cockroaches are nocturnal insects. They are dormant during the day but are active at night, and that is when they wreck your home when you are not around. If you suddenly turn on your bathroom lights at night, you will see a colony of roaches skimping away.
Your bathroom has a lot of hideous spaces that roaches fit in during the day and only come out at night. The shower drain and the pipe below it is their favorite spot.
Gaps, crevices, and cracks in the ceilings provide favorable hideous space for these persistent intruders to shelter.
Where do roaches hide in the bathroom?
Because roaches are nocturnal insects, you rarely see them crawling in your shower area during the day. You will likely find a dead roach on your floor or sink. See their eggs, excrements, droppings, and cylindrical casings around the toilet.
Roaches are perfect at hiding, and they choose areas you can’t imagine they could be hiding in. Below are the most common places worth checking to find the cockroaches hiding in your bathroom:
- Within the bathroom drawers and cabinets
- In the baseboards
- Just like silverfish in bathrooms, bugs like roaches hide in bathtub drains, cracks on bathroom walls, and flour
- Cracks in the ceilings and walls
- Inside electrical sockets
- Inside the toilet tank
- In and around the toilet seat
- Inside the shower drain pipe
- Between gaps in the pipes
- Around vents
- Crevices
- Inside electrical wires
How to get rid of roaches in the bathroom
If you ever see baby roaches in your bathroom, you know there will soon be an invasion. Roaches are very persistent and multiply fast to form colonies. The longer they stay around, the more they become challenging to remove entirely from the bathroom.
The immediate task you want is to get rid of them and prevent them from coming in again. Use the methods below to get rid of roaches from your bathroom. While at it, remember removing roaches is not a once-and-done activity. You really must practice these methods daily till you eradicate the roaches.
1. Set traps
Before you remove the roaches from your bathroom, it’s crucial to know which type of roach you are dealing with to apply the most effective control and management methods. To see the kind of roaches on your property, trap them using baits.
Baits allure roaches to come from their hideous places to feed on them. The traps are usually attractive but poisonous. The roaches ingest substances from the traps and go back to their hiding sites. After that, the poison kills them, and they spread it to the other roaches that eat their remains and die.
The liquid gel bait and bait station are two kinds of roach traps. Liquid gel baits are more effective, and you use them by spreading the gel on areas roaches love to trap them. Meanwhile, bait stations are less effective than liquid gel bait, and you use them by placing them on the floor near the edges of the counters.
Patience is critical when getting rid of the roaches with bait traps. They take about two weeks to trap all the roaches from their hideous places.
Place the baits at entry points near the shower drain, windows, and cracks and crevices in the bathroom.
2. Clean the bathroom
Roaches love dirty spaces, which could sometimes be why they have moved in. Clean the entire bathroom by removing any dirt that might be attracting the roaches. Wipe the countertops and drawers using a heavy-duty surface cleaner with a disinfectant.
Sweep dust particles from bathroom walls and windows. Vacuum clean the floor to trap and remove dirt. Rinse the shower drains with hot water to kill roaches’ eggs and those inside the pipes. Empty the trash can and clean it.
Alternatively, replace the trash can with one that has a tight lid to block the top and prevent the roaches from entering to feed on the waste.
3. Dry the bathroom
Moisture attracts roaches to move into the bathroom. By removing water sources, you provide a negative space that would send cockroaches packing from the shower room.
Always wipe water from the floor and those that spill on the walls after bathing. If you have live bathroom plants, water them lightly to keep the surface soil dry.
Remove wet mats from the bathroom and replace them with dry ones. Toss wet towels into the washer after use or air them outside before bringing them back to the bathroom.
If your bathroom has condensation and humidity issues, use a portable humidifier or a fan to dry any moisture in the air and surfaces. Try opening the windows during the day after taking a warm shower to allow light to enter the room to moisten it up. Check for water leaks in the pipes and faucets and repair them.
4. Seal crack and entry points
Roaches enter the bathroom through cracks and openings in the walls, windows, and ceilings. To keep them out, seal the entry points.
Check for gaps around water pipes, underneath the sink, spaces between the windows, under the door, between pipes, and tiles. Then close them using a caulking gun. The calling should be inorganic, as roaches feed on organic ones, and water can damage them.
5. Maintain an anti- roach bathroom
After getting rid of the roaches from your shower room, you want to prevent them from returning to your space. Preventing the recurrence saves your efforts and ensures your bathroom is free from disease and contaminants.
Use a roach repellent to keep the roaches away from the bathroom. Suitable homemade repellents are cedarwood oil, peppermint oil, and corn oil. Roaches hate the scents from these oils, and they would stay away from places with these scents.
Pour some oil into a spray bottle and spread it on cracks, crevices, edges of walls, and under sinks. Alternatively, use ultrasonic and subsonic insect devices to keep the roaches away.
Maintaining a clean bathroom is the best preventive measure against roaches’ invasions. Cover the shower drains at night to prevent roaches from sneaking in and hiding.
Regularly check the pipes for leakages and repair them. Ventilate the bathroom and dry surfaces and floors after using the shower room. You may want to observe a maintenance schedule yearly to monitor and control roaches.
References
- University of Minnesota Extension: Cockroaches.
- Texas A & M AgriLife Extension: Cockroach Biology and Management