Kill Cockroaches With Boric Acid

July 23, 2007 at 10:59 pm · Filed under how to, memories

This is a response to this post about pesky cucarachas:

American Cockroach

Living in a small rustic house with three (sometimes five) college guys in Abilene, Texas, I wasn’t sure who was to blame for the cockroaches. Things weren’t exactly kept clean. But one summer, I stayed to work while others left town. The roaches didn’t leave with them.

I happened to run into the landlord and I mentioned the bugs. His response was unexpected. “Yeah, but don’t worry. They’re tree roaches. They just come inside to look for water.” He went on to explain that the typical cockroaches people worry about are a different, smaller kind. They get into your food, but these don’t.

To get rid of them, he suggested a unique attack. Let’s call it the banana borax blitz:

  • Step 1: Chop up a banana and leave it outside near where you think they might be coming inside.
  • Step 2: After midnight, go outside to check the banana. You should find more cockroaches than you ever wanted to see in one place.
  • Step 3: Lightly dust them with borax, or powdered boric acid. You can buy it at most grocery stores.
  • Step 4: Panic as they scatter. Beware, these things can and fly when disturbed!

When cockroaches clean themselves, they eat the powder. Death is swift. I actually watched a few slowly crawl away and flip over with a kind of cockroach kabuki gesture.

It turns out boric acid is well documented for killing roaches (although others suggest a more subtle approach). Four of the top 10 results on Google are from .edu’s.

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6 Comments »

  Gravatar susan m wrote @ July 24th, 2007 at 10:19 am

We used to have a lot of citrus trees and they’d draw rats. It was so bad, we’d be sitting out on the deck and rats would run along the deck railing right in front of us. People would say, “Oh, don’t worry… they’re just tree rats.”

What is it that makes people think “tree vermin” are any less gross??

  Gravatar eliza wrote @ August 2nd, 2007 at 10:07 am

Careful, Nathan, or you may give birth to the next ComiCon Super Star: Roachman! Once exposed to boric acid, he now scitters across bathtubs and freaks out your wife in the name of fighting crime.

  Gravatar Dr. Cereal wrote @ August 2nd, 2007 at 8:02 pm

I found that owning a cat helped keep the cockroach population in check while I was living in Mexico. (Although she often took to bringing them inside herself).
Strange that the University of Kentucky would have done a study on cockroach elimination–I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in this state. Maybe that’s why…

  Gravatar Paul wrote @ December 14th, 2007 at 9:41 am

The wife and I have been battling roaches, literally, for years now. We don’t know for sure how they came to live with us to start with, but they resisted every formula we researched and tried. Chemicals don’t do the job, either in spray, aerosol, or bait form. They just kept going, and going, and going.

Boric acid is one of the solutions we tried – in gel form, in powder form, mixed with flour, cocoa, sugar, etc. We would ever so carefully place the boric acid in the places we thought the roaches were coming and going from. And, THERE was the mistake.

It’s the boric acid that does the killing. I read an article, which once again stressed that the POWDER sticks to their legs, then kills them when ingested during grooming.

It’s holiday time. I don’t want these little critters running rampant through the house when our sons bring people home for the holidays. I re-read that article, and I grabbed three plastic bottles of cheap store brand boric acid.

Twisted the little tops open, and began SPRAYING the powder all over. Under the kitchen sink, under the counters, under and behind the range, EVERYWHERE in the pantry. Little puffs of air from the plastic bottle, that carried a (mostly) fine powder, which floated everywhere.

I wandered the house, doing the bathrooms, the living room, laundryroom, the hallways. When I got to the central heat and air, I opened the door to it, turned on the blower, and puffed the powder into the air intake. (This may or may not damage the squirrel cage fan – if so, I’ll be replacing that one day, lol)

This fine powder drifted throughout the house, EVERYWHERE.

The roach population was almost depleted. No longer did armies of roaches greet us when we turned on the lights in the morning. Since then, I have powdered the house twice more, and the roaches have become VERY SCARCE. I believe that the few we are still finding are migrating indoors from the yard, or wherever.

If I can locate an outdoor haven, and treat it, then our problems will finally be solved!!

My advice: forget all the high dollar chemicals, forget the mixes, forget everything except the boric acid. Dust your home thoroughly. If you have pets and children, find them a temporary home for the night. DUST!. Get it everywhere! Look for the little nooks and crannies behind cabinets, under refrigerators, and behind loose paneling, and give each one a puff or more. But, puff it out in FINE DUST POWDER, don’t get carried away, and cake it onto anything. You don’t want a roach to be able to walk through your house without getting coated in powder, or at least getting his legs full of the particles.

I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel!

  Gravatar Robert Kelly wrote @ February 8th, 2008 at 8:14 pm

Even though Borax or Boracic acid is only class 5 poison and about as toxic as salt, there are warnings about breathing it in. If you ate a half a kilo it could be fatal, much less for a baby. It is effective elliminator of cockroaches but I make up little pellets with flour. milk powder, peanut butter, water and borax. Then put them in out of the way places.It’s amazing the only roaches you see alive the next day are dying. Warning, not good for buddhists.

  Gravatar Bill Schmidt wrote @ July 4th, 2009 at 2:23 pm

Well, my brother and I just got finished nailing every nook an cranny we coul find in the main room affected. First we dowsed the gaps along the baseboards and then I followed with a bead of caulking to seal the gap on top. My exterior wall has been a source of entry and severe hyper vigilance on my part. At first we just kept a gallon of OrthoMax that comes with the convenient squirt gun. That was OK for awhile, until I realized all that was happening was I was chasing these young parents into the walls for a couple of weeks where they would be fruitful and multiply and then come back with the some of the family in tow! We live within 75 feet of 15 acres of asparagas with plenty of irrigation, but June was full of triple digit days and I think they thought we had the only water around. We are dealing with VERY mature Germans, Orientals, Wood and Brown Banded. The Orientals are big (very big at 2″+) but the creepy are the larger Germans as they fly very quietly too! This time we did Boric Acid and the caulking at what we think are entry points. I work into the wee hours online and it’s been freaking me out when I think I’m feeling air circulating around my calves and it turns out to be…one of them making their way up my calf! If you can imagine the site of a bull elephant realizing a timid little mouse has caught a ride!

I sure hope this has some effect. I made sure there was enough powder for them to ski on in their baseboard freeways! The only side effect are the fumes from the silicone I used (ammonia) which will be present for 24 hours. Maybe then I can finally sleep… My next move might be to mix boric acid with penut butter and maybe a little crusteaz pancake flour and leave some treats around the rest of the house.

I have also read that a large butter tub with inside wall rubbed down with vaseline, a triple folded paper towel sheet inside dowsed with wine and a little boric acid and a ramp to get in, makes for a pretty handy motel. They smell the wine, see the ramp, take the plunge, get drunk and can’t crawl out making them drop dead inside the container. I will try one, just for the satisfaction of seeing the deception avenge me…LOL!

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