Pest Control in Old Ellicott City and the Historic District
Old Ellicott City is where the town started, in the 1770s, when the Ellicott brothers built their mills on the Patapsco. Main Street drops downhill past granite storefronts set right into the rock, under the old B&O bridge, and down to the river and the station that opened in 1830. Up the hill are the courthouse, the churches, the ruins of the Patapsco Female Institute and streets of older homes, many on stone foundations. Pest control in Old Ellicott City means working with buildings that were here long before anyone thought about sealing a pipe hole.
These buildings are lovely, and they're stubborn. Granite and fieldstone walls hold cool and damp. Lower levels sit against the hillside or near the Tiber and Hudson branches. Shared walls run from one storefront to the next. That combination suits mice, Norway rats, carpenter ants, camel crickets and spiders.
Damp lower floors after the floods
The floods of July 2016 and May 2018 hit lower Main Street hard, and the town has spent years rebuilding. This page isn't the place to go over that. It's worth saying, carefully, that buildings which took on water can keep some damp in the stone, the framing or the lower-level floors long after the cleanup. Damp wood draws carpenter ants and, in time, termites. Humid lower levels draw camel crickets, spiders and mice. If your building was repaired after a flood, a tech who knows the area can check the framing on the lower floors for anything moving in, and point out spots where a dehumidifier or better drainage would help. Our guide to pests in stone foundations goes into what to look for.
Shops and restaurants on Main Street
Restaurants, cafes and shops along Main Street deal with what any old commercial strip does: mice moving between connected buildings, rats near the river and the trash areas, and flies and roaches drawn to kitchens. Back doors that open onto the hillside, deliveries, and trash that sits overnight all add to it. A tech who does commercial work can set a routine of locked bait stations outside, traps inside and sealing at the back walls. Rat and mouse control for older buildings explains how that usually goes.
Homes on the hill streets have their own list. Cellars dug into rock, porches and stairs close to wet soil, and wooded lots running down to the branches mean carpenter ants in the sills and porch posts in spring and mice every fall. The old window sashes and roof gaps let stink bugs into the attic by the hundreds in October. Just across the river in Oella and up Frederick Road toward Catonsville's older streets, the houses are much the same.
Around Old Ellicott City: Main Street (Route 144) and the B&O Ellicott City Station · The railroad bridge over lower Main Street · Tiber River and the Hudson Branch · Patapsco Female Institute Historic Park · Howard County Courthouse on Court Avenue · Patapsco River and the bridge to Oella (ZIP 21043)
Questions We Get
Can a business on Main Street call?
Yes. Mention that it's a business so the call goes to a company that handles commercial work, and say if you share walls with the shop next door.
Will they use anything that harms old woodwork or stone?
Say it's a historic building when you call. Most of the work is trapping, targeted treatment and sealing, and a careful tech plans around original materials.
Also serving Dunloggin, Turf Valley, Valley Mede, St. Johns Lane, Columbia, Catonsville, Clarksville, Woodstock and Marriottsville, Elkridge.