“While I’m here, I can go ahead and take care of that for you, too” may be some of the most important words in a wildlife or pest control operator’s vocabulary. Not only can they help you increase your average ticket size, but they offer you the opportunity to minimize future wildlife conflicts for your customers.
And these situations are incredibly common. While inspecting for bats in an attic, you may notice your customer’s home lacks a chimney cap. While setting traps for mice, you may find that your customer’s foundation vents are vulnerable. A good pest control expert notices these situations and reports them to homeowners as additional services to keep critters away.
You can’t take care of the problem, though, if you don’t have the right equipment on hand. So in this guide, we’re going to cover common additional service opportunities that come up often in the wildlife and pest control worlds as well as the solutions you can use to fix them.
By the time you’re finished here, you’ll have several ideas for additional products you can add to your work truck to make your animal control offering as versatile as possible.
1. Chimney Caps
An open chimney is just a wildlife problem waiting to happen (particularly when it comes to raccoons). If you’re ever on a roof and notice a chimney without a cap, that’s an easy add-on to recommend to a customer. In a lot of cases, you can even spot a capless chimney from the ground.
Chimney caps are bulky, though, and they may take up a good deal of room on your truck. So, how can you make the best possible use of the space you have while also ensuring you can offer this service to your customers?
At HY-C, chimney caps are our specialty. We’ve been making them since 1947. And we recommend 3 solutions specifically for wildlife and pest control professionals:
- Stock chimney caps
- Universal chimney caps
- Multi-pack chimney caps
Stock Chimney Caps
Chimney flues come in all shapes and sizes. But by far the most common are square-shaped flues that measure either 9” x 9” or 13” x 13”. We make stock chimney caps in both sizes, and most work trucks have enough room to accommodate at least a couple of each.
If you decide to keep stock caps on your truck, we’d strongly recommend keeping a stainless steel leg kit there, too. This kit is for chimney flues that protrude one inch or less from the chimney’s crown, allowing the cap to slide into place (rather than being bolted onto the flue).
The box that this leg kit comes in takes up virtually no space, measuring just 6” x 2.5” x 1”. It may be wise to keep a few handy.
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Universal Chimney Caps
As their name implies, the universal chimney caps are designed to fit just about any flue you’re likely to come across, regardless of shape or size. Between two models (a 13” x 13” cap and a 13” x 20” cap), you’ll be able to cover 95% of your customers.
The secret lies in the cap’s internal, adjustable anchoring system. It’s threaded and can be expanded or contracted to fit a number of flue sizes. The 13” x 13” caps are available in packs of five, and the 13” x 20” caps are available in packs of four.
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Multi-Pack Stackable Chimney Caps
Our line of multi-pack caps were actually designed specifically with work trucks in mind. They nest nicely into one another, taking up as little space on vehicles as possible. Their hoods are also removable, and all applicable installation hardware is included with each pack.
These caps come four to a pack. And while packs are only available in one size, you can easily keep some 9” x 9”, 13” x 13”, and 9” x 13” caps on your truck to cover most of your customers’ needs.
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2. LintEater Dryer Vent Cleaning Kit
It’s no secret that critters target dryer vents (especially birds). Wildlife and pest control operators pull birds’ nests out of dryer vents all the time. And while you can always offer to add a dryer vent cover over the vent, you can also offer to clean the vent, too.
Our LintEater dryer vent cleaning kits include an auger brush head and four three-foot rods for twelve total feet of reach. The rods connect and disconnect from each other, too, making them very easy to store in your work truck.
We’ve even written a very in-depth guide on the cost of dryer vent cleaning services to give you a good idea as to how much you should charge for a cleaning. In addition, you can also find a guide on how to use a dryer vent cleaning kit to help you see it in action.
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3. Foundation Vent Screens
Given their ground-level access, foundation vents are a common entry point for nuisance wildlife. Fortunately, keeping them out is as easy as adding a foundation vent cover over the vent. These strong steel covers lock out critters from squirrels to raccoons.
The 10” x 18” screen is probably the best size to keep on your truck as most foundation vents are around that size. The screens themselves are just an eighth of an inch thick, meaning that keeping a stack of a dozen on hand takes up very little space.
The covers are also available with InsectArmor, our 1.6 mm steel mesh that keeps out bees, wasps, hornets, stink bugs, and other stinging insects. As you can tell, foundation vent covers offer the opportunity for you to provide plenty of additional services at multiple price points.
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4. Roof VentGuards
Hundreds of wildlife control operators across the United States install tens of thousands of roof vent covers every year. They’re a very common wildlife exclusion item, and keeping several of them on your work truck as an additional offering is an absolute no-brainer.
The 16” x 16” style is used most often by far (though if your vehicle can accommodate the large 30” x 30” Roof VentGuard, that’s a very common size, too). The covers also nest very tightly into each other, making it simple to keep twenty or more of them in a relatively small space.
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5. Pest Armor
Between its 3 distinct profiles, a stainless steel option, and tight mesh panels, there’s no shortage of pest armor applications. When it comes to what you should keep on your truck, though, a tube of Pest Armor is the best way to maximize both space and inventory.
Like most HY-GUARD EXCLUSION products, Pest Armor stacks and nests nicely. If you have a PVC tube attached to your truck, you can fit several lengths of Pest Armor inside to cover your customers’ roof deck vents, skylights, roof offsets, siding gaps, and more.
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6. Universal VentGuards
Like the universal chimney caps mentioned above, the Universal VentGuard is a great item to keep on your vehicle due to its versatility. Crafted from stainless steel, it’s usually installed over bathroom vents (because the stainless steel won’t rust from the warm, moist bathroom-vent air).
Like many of the items in this guide, the Universal VentGuards stack and nest to optimize storage space, allowing you to keep several with you at a time. They’re also available in either black or white to match the aesthetics of your customers’ homes.
Discover the HY-GUARD EXCLUSION Universal VentGuard
7. SpinAway
Rounding out this list is SpinAway — our multi-purpose cleaning tool. Its replaceable brush head and telescoping rod make it endlessly versatile, offering several feet of reach to clean eaves, corners, and more hard-to-reach places.
Most often, wildlife and pest control operators use SpinAway to make dewebbing a home easier. Its most stand-out feature is its ability to connect to a cordless drill, allowing you to utilize the torque of the tool to clean quickly and efficiently with minimal effort.
Further Learning
This has been a look at 7 great products and tools to keep on your truck to expand your pest and wildlife control service offerings. Each of these products has several nuances to learn and understand. And to find out more, the best place to look is in the HY-C Learning Center.
Our Learning Center has an abundance of free resources you can use to learn more about HY-C products and how to use them. We also cover the ins and outs of nuisance wildlife to educate homeowners and provide tips and tricks for operators across the country.
Take a look any time you want and use the information we provide to help round out your business and get the most out of HY-C products.
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