How to Keep Spiders Off Your Siding

Remember the movie Arachnophobia? It was a horror-comedy from 1990 about an infestation of killer spiders. The movie ended with a huge spider getting shot by a nail gun into a huge barn fire. Now, you probably won’t have to do anything so dramatic to deal with spiders on the siding of your home, but there are a few steps you can take to drive the eight-legged critters away from the facade of your home.

You may not think that tiny little arachnids are such a problem, but the presence of their webs and their eggs all over the siding of your home is not so attractive—not to mention jitter inducing. Nevertheless, here are a few different options you can leverage to make the siding of your home spider-free.

Option #1: Broom Sweep

Imagine coming home from work to find your home totally gone (of course, we hope that doesn’t happen to you). You’d probably have to find a new place to live, right? Take a broom and sweep away all the spider webs from the side of your home. Your broom will probably take some spiders down as well.

Take care and pay special attention to the nooks and crannies, like areas under the eaves of the roof, spaces under windows and shutters, and areas where siding material ends and stonework begins (if your home has a brick or stone ring around the foundation).

You could use a regular old broom, but there are specialized brooms for this kind of thing. They form a round head that sort of looks like a muppet, and its shape is especially useful for sweeping cobwebs out of hard-to-reach places like corners and eaves.

Egg Sacs…Gross

If you find a globular egg sack, looking like something from the movie alien, don’t just sweep it aside with your broom, because the bristles may pop it open, realizing hundreds if not thousands of tiny little spiders. Perhaps they aren’t ready to hatch, but the egg sacs will get everywhere.

Of course, once they do hatch, they’ll get all over the place and rebuild all the cobwebs you’re working to remove. Instead, pluck the sack off by hand. It’s okay to touch it, even though it’s creepy. Put it into a jar, fill it with sand, and throw it deep into the nether realms of the sea…or just crush it if that’s easier. Maybe throw it into the toilet and flush it away.  

After you’ve done a sweep with the broom and removed any egg sacs (hopefully you don’t find any) take a garden hose and spray the infected area around the sac with a hose, leveraging the flood power of water to quell the quiet riot of spiders threatening to break loose…you know, in case you missed any eggs.

Option #2: Pressure Wash

Speaking of water, another option might be to pressure wash the side of your home. This option is easier for those with multi-storied homes. If you can’t quite reach the upper levels with a broom, or if you find a broom handle extension unwieldy, power-washing will help destroy those hard-to-reach webs.

If the siding of your home is looking a little grimy or just doesn’t give your house that new-home look, you might be due for a pressure-wash anyway. Another benefit of pressure washing your home—especially if you use a professional—is that all the nooks and crannies of the facade that are hard to get, you’ll get.

Seal Gaps and Cracks

Spiders love to chill in dark caves and lurk for incoming prey. Don’t you remember the giant spider from Lord of the Rings? That eight-legged dude was just posting up in a rocky cavern, waiting for incoming people. In a similar way, arachnids and other critters find the nooks and crannies of your facade convenient places to hide away from the light of day, suck the blood out of other bugs, and lay their foul eggs.

Break up the party by filling gaps with caulk or outdoor sealant. Of course, if your siding has retained some more serious damage, you might consider replacing it. Siding these days is usually a synthetic material that comes in sheets, so you can’t just patch up cracks like you could along a brick, stone, or concrete wall.

Some particularly guilty areas when it comes to harboring spiders are the potential gaps and cracks that can form around openings like windows and doors. Seal these gaps up, which will of course also benefit the insulation factor of your home.

Insecticide

You can spray the area around your home with a liquid insecticide. Those that contain pyrethroids, chlorpyrifos, and diazinon are particularly effective for repelling eight-legged visitors.

Trim and Shave

When it comes to lice, getting a serious haircut can be an effective measure for keeping your head free and clear—in fact, that’s one of the reasons why back in the day, people would shave their head and wear powdered wigs.

Try the same tactic with the grass and shrubs near the exterior of your home. Bugs love to eat, love, and pray in foliage. After all, that’s where they live in nature. Make it more difficult for them to transition from the branch to your facade by keeping shrubs and unruly grass away from the side of your home.

Remove Debris Piles

Are you one of those people that like to store firewood by the side of your home? Perhaps you have some other things piled up in the yard, like discarded building materials, seasonal items, or used play equipment.

Any of those items are just calling for spiders to come and live in the multifaceted space provided by these piles of…stuff. Once they’re there, it’s an easy transition to the walls of your home, so nip that problem in the bud and just move all that stuff away from the walls.

Better yet, it gives you an excuse to go through it and discard what you don’t need. If you do need it, consider finding a different storage place, like the garage, a shed, or—in the case of firewood—even a tarp covering your stockpile…away from the walls of the house.

Lights, Camera…No Action

When it comes to lighting the exterior of your home, consider choosing yellow lights, because that particular color tends to attract fewer bugs. Spiders eat bugs, so fewer bugs means fewer spiders. In fact, you can even get special but lights which are designed to avoid attracting insects.

Insect eyes are different than human eyes (if you’ve ever managed to capture a bug under a microscope, you’d see that) and many insects have trouble catching light in the lower end of the color temperature spectrum. Yellow-colored bug lights take advantage of this trait and make it harder for them to see.

Of course, you could avoid the problem entirely by just turning your exterior lights off unless you need them, but you may be one of those people who prefer to keep your home illuminated at night.

You could also consider choosing darker-colored siding because it’s also less attractive to insects. Just remember: brighter colors mean more bugs, and more bugs mean more hungry spiders.

Replace Your Siding

Maybe your old siding is attracting insects and spiders. Your old siding is splitting, cracking and warping because of excessive moisture and some spiders love to stay close to moisture.  Now’s the time to replace your old siding with brand new vinyl siding from Feldco.

Over 400,000 delighted customers across the Midwest have heard of Feldco’s high-quality vinyl siding designed to withstand extreme weather conditions and temperatures. Speak to a product specialist and get a free quote today.