Kevin Carrillo Website

Kevin Carrillo

Pest Control Specialist, MMPC

Kevin Carrillo is a Pest Control Specialist and the Senior Project Manager for MMPC, a pest control service and certified Minority-owned Business Enterprise (MBE) based in the New York City area. MMPC is certified by the industry’s leading codes and practices, including the National Pest Management Association (NPMA), QualityPro, GreenPro, and The New York Pest Management Association (NYPMA). MMPC's work has been featured in CNN, NPR, and ABC News.

Education

  • Bachelor's Degree in English, Hunter CUNY

Favorite Piece of Advice

The majority of (pest) issues can be handled with perseverance and patience. That and a good flashlight.

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Forum Comments (10)

Flea infestation since July: I can't take it anymore
Purchase a cheap steam cleaner and employ steam cleaning on your fabric, upholstered items, and any carpet in your home very thoroughly and very frequently. Of course, you want to test your steamer in a specific area first and make sure it's not going to cause any sort of discoloration. But steam cleaning will probably be the most effective non-professional method of removing fleas.
How do I get rid of carpenter ants in my house?
Like regular ants, when carpenter ant colonies get to a certain size, they send out swarmers, or flying ants, to find suitable areas to grow new colonies. While carpenter ants are not as damaging as termites, they come close. It's just that people tend to notice them sooner because of their size.

Carpenter ants are drawn to untreated, unpainted, RAW wooden areas of your home, to damp areas, or if there's dead wood or rotting wood on the property. Take care of firewood stacks, cover or remove old stumps, make sure wood is painted or stained, replace damaged siding, etc.

Getting rid of carpenter ants is going to require professional intervention once you've got them because of their ability to create not only structural damage, but to infest the structural areas of your home you don't necessarily have access to.

If the issue is low-level enough, you may be able to take care of the issue with store-bought carpenter ant bait, but this is not recommended if you're a homeowner - protect your investment!
How do I get rid of fleas for good?
Fleas can sometimes be a real challenge, but here are a couple of helpful tricks I've used to de-flea my own home.
1. Get your pets on medication as prescribed and approved by a veterinarian.
2. Weekly flea baths.
3. At LEAST 3x daily flea combing - be prepared to remove fleas as you're combing and have somewhere to put them.
4. Anywhere in your home that there is shade is a hangout, so vacuum it regularly and be prepared to clean out the vacuum with rubbing alcohol.
5. Get yourself a bulk order of lint rollers. Run lint rollers REGULARLY over anywhere your pet rests - you will probably pick up both fleas and their larvae.
6. Steam clean your carpets - even low-pile carpets are thicker than you think, and fleas can hide out deep in the weave.
7. If you have an outdoor pet, try as much as you can to cut back and eliminate foliage that creates shaded areas. If you can't, do your best to restrict pet access to these areas.
How do I get rid of moths for good?
Hard work and patience are required. Moth caterpillars - the ones that actually do the damage - can lie dormant or be on a delayed metamorphosis for 1-3 years. Many people think the problem is beaten just because they stop seeing adult moths, only for them to pop up again in 6 months.
1. Launder EVERYTHING.
2. Deep clean EVERY place that clothing was kept.
3. Regularly steam clean anything upholstered and carpeting.
4. Change out felt carpet padding for synthetic when possible.
5. Just because traps aren't catching doesn't mean you should stop using them. Keep one in each room and one in each closet, in dark, out-of-the-way areas. Change them every 3-6 months (by label) until they're clear for 3 years.
6. Keep as much of your freshly cleaned and not-worn-everyday clothing in storage bins and garment bags as you can.
7. Think outside the box. Caterpillars feed on a protein called keratin, found in our hair and fingernails (same for animals). Anything you have that contains this protein is a suspect: food source, silk, wool, felt, your pool table, an antique horse-hair stuffed couch, etc.
Please help me find a way to get rid of bed bugs as fast as possible
How you kill bedbugs will depend on the home and on how long the issue has gone on for. That being said, if bedbugs are detected early on, and it's a low-level isolated infestation, it's completely treatable on your own. The first step is always going to be a thorough inspection of your home, starting at the bed and working your way out from there. Ideally, you want to have a good high-powered flashlight with you. You're going to be looking in all cracks and crevices that are starting at something that's about two millimeters wide.

Searching throughout basically the entire home and wherever you're able to find bedbugs, you can simply remove them either by vacuuming and disposing of the vacuum bag, or killing them with Isopropyl rubbing alcohol or something that's at least 80% alcohol. Rubbing alcohol, physical removal, vacuuming, and cleaning the vacuum will treat the issue but the main thing is diligence and perseverance—as long as you are actively searching for the bedbugs, the bedbugs themselves, once you find them, are pretty easily killed. It's totally fixable on your own, but most people start to lose heart once they've done all of their laundries and gone through all of their books, and then they're still getting bitten and they just haven't thought to look in all of the areas that the bedbugs can be hiding.
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Q&A Comments (108)

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Co-authored Articles (66)

How to Kill Ants with Borax and Sugar (& Keep Them Away!)

Learn to make a safe, low-cost, and effective ant killer at homeIf you’re looking to get rid of ants without using store-bought pesticides, borax is a cheap and effective solution. In this article, we’ll teach you ho...

10 DIY Methods to Get Rid of Roaches Overnight (Plus Prevention Tips)

Expert tips to put an end to cockroach infestations in your homeThe last thing you want to see creeping around your house is the dreaded cockroach, but you may want to be able to solve the problem without resorting to to...

How to Make Homemade Rat Poison From Household Ingredients

Kill rats quickly with this natural DIYCommercial rat poisons contain toxic chemicals that could pose a risk to the people and pets in your home. As an alternative, you can make your own, less toxic, rat poisons from com...

A Complete Guide to Getting Rid of Bed Bugs

Blech—is that a bed bug you just saw crawling around your mattress? It can be hard to get a good night’s sleep when you’re worried about the unwanted pests that are making themselves at home in your home. Not to wo...

How to Get Rid of Small Ants & Prevent Infestations

Eliminate tiny ants in your house or garden with this guide Having a tiny ant infestation in your home or garden can be frustrating, especially if you don’t know how to get rid of them. Luckily, there are a ton of easy...

How to

Identify Bed Bug Droppings

If you’ve woken up with itchy red bites all over your arms or legs, you might be looking at a bed bug infestation. One of the best ways to ID pests is to look for their droppings—and since bed bugs are so small, sear...

How to Drive Away Gnats for Good: Easy DIY Methods

Get rid of the gnats in your house fast with these simple home remediesWhile gnats aren’t necessarily harmful, they sure are annoying! Luckily, there are lots of ways to trap and exterminate these pests without having ...

How to Get Rid of Ants in the Kitchen

Eliminate those pesky ants and prevent them from coming backIf you've ever had ants crawling around in your kitchen, you know that they can quickly go from being an occasional annoyance to a persistent pest. These critte...

How to Kill Gnats in Houseplants Fast

Noticing small, irritating insects on or around your houseplants? Fungus gnats are attracted to moist soil, making them a common pesky problem for plant owners. Fortunately, there are a lot of techniques you can use to g...

How to

Get Rid of Fleas on Humans

If you have small, itchy red bites on your legs or ankles, you’re probably being bitten by fleas. Fleas live on pets like cats and dogs, but they’ll sometimes jump onto humans in a pinch. Getting rid of the fleas on ...

How to Keep Ants Out of Your House

Natural and chemical solutions to repel antsAnts outnumber humans 140,000 to 1, meaning that there are over 1,092,000,000,000,000 ants on Earth. Even so, it doesn’t mean these pesty insects have to make themselves comf...

How to

Identify Bed Bug Bites

Many people are familiar with the popular refrain, “good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite,” but not many of us can actually identify bed bug bites. This article will walk you through how to identify ...

How to

Check for Bedbugs

If you don't want the bed bugs to bite, determine if they're in your home or hotel room. Learn how to spot live bed bugs or signs that they're infesting your space. Then check common bed bug hiding spots, such as beds or...

How to Kill Roaches with Borax or Boric Acid

Pest control specialist Kevin Carrillo & wikiHow staff explain how to use Borax and sugar to kill roach infestationsIf you’re tired of surprise roaches scurrying across your floors and up your walls, borax is a lifesav...

How to

Trap Cockroaches

It can be very hard to . Smashing each individual roach seems like an insurmountable task—or an inhumane one—and you may want a way to tackle the problem without getting your hands dirty. A trap can be a grea...

How to

Get Rid of Spiders in the House

Most spiders prefer living outdoors, but all too often, you may run across a few spiders that have found their way indoors in search of food or shelter. Getting rid of these pests is most easily accomplished by keeping t...

How to Trap, Relocate, and Deter Possums from Your Home

Possums, or opossums, are nocturnal animals that grow to be about the size of a large cat, but they sure can be peskier than a rogue kitten roaming your yard! Safely and humanely trapping a possum isn’t too hard, but i...

How to Tell a Field Mouse and a House Mouse Apart

Find out how fur coloring, size, and dropping shape differs between field and house mice Out of the corner of your eye, you see a small, furry critter race across your floor. It’s definitely a mouse, but how can you te...

How to

Keep Snakes Away

A snake slithering by can really ruin an otherwise beautiful afternoon outside, and discovering that a snake has somehow managed to find its way ''inside'' your home? Nobody wants that. The good news is that there are ea...

Flea Bombs: How to Use Them Effectively & Safely

What you need to know about preparing and treating your home for fleasFinding fleas in your home is definitely not fun. Now you've got to call an exterminator and evacuate—you don't have time for this! Well, what if we...
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