4

Situation:

  • There is a crack on my bathtub that ants are coming in and out of. The ant traffic seems to increases significantly after a shower.
  • Immediately above the crack there is what appears to be small gap. enter image description here

Perceived Problem:

  • Water is entering the small gap since ant traffic increases through the bottom hole after the shower.

Questions:

  • What are these gaps and what is their purpose? Are they known to be effective?
  • Is there anything in particular the ant traffic can be indicative of? This is on the 3rd level of a townhome.
user
  • 97
  • 3
  • 3
    Those gaps are defects/damaged areas that need to be fix. A temporary fix might be to supply some silicon caulking to fill/seal those gaps. If not the landowner then should tell landlord about it to check/repair any water damage inside of the wall/floor. – crip659 Dec 25 '22 at 18:17
  • are you sure those are ANT's – Ruskes Dec 25 '22 at 18:48
  • Get a tube of indoxacarb gel, spread small blobs of it all over, where ants might be, cracks around the bath, light switches, etc. etc. Leave it at least a week for the ants to eat it, then fill in the cracks. – niemiro Dec 26 '22 at 11:09
  • Thanks all. I just caulked it and the ants are gone for now. – user Jan 02 '23 at 16:26

2 Answers2

6

The top one looks like either a manufacturing flaw in the bathtub or a chip during installation. The bottom one is simply a gap that used to be covered by caulk but isn't well covered any more. In both cases, the solution is to caulk the gaps.

The big unknowns are:

  • Is there significant water damage in the wall due to these gaps? Unless the wall is easily accessible from the other side, the only way to really tell is to remove some tiles, which would end up being a lot of work, possibly for nothing. (Removing tiles is easy, putting them back in an attractive and functional way is a lot more work.)
  • Is there a major population of ants inside the wall? Or are they just passing through. Again, checking inside the wall is the only way to know for sure.

As far as pest control measures beyond sealing the gaps, that depends on whether you consider ants to be mere pests vs. friends who are just visiting in the wrong place at the wrong time.

manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact
  • 94,107
  • 9
  • 116
  • 276
3

The repair would be expensive and time consuming. You would need to replace the tub and remove at least part of the tile to check for damage. The easiest solution would be to put ant poison in the cracks before sealing. You may be able to get a borescope in the hole and see what is happening on the inside. They may simply be using that as a path to their nest elsewhere.

We have them in the spring so I mix boric acid and powdered sugar and set it out for them to feast on. In about ten days or so they do not come back. In your case I would place it by the cracks on the tub and let them feast. Expect an increase in traffic for a few day. You do not need to do anything the Boric acid will do the work.

Gil
  • 5,880
  • 1
  • 5
  • 19