Pest Control – How to Protect Home?

Someone just came by my house to sell pest control services. I really haven’t thought much about pest control since I moved into this house about a year ago. I sent him away after a discussion because I am not comfortable with using any pesticides. He treats against all sorts of pests from rodents, to wasps & hornets to ants and spiders.

Ants never bothered me but I know some of them can cause wood/structural damage if left alone. Spiders creep me out but I prefer to leave them alone. We get some decent sized wolf spiders, I see a lot out in the yard but rarely see them in the house. (Although I had a horror movie scene several weeks back – I went into the basement shower after being outside but I hadn’t used the shower over the winter and I shook the curtain to remove excess water a spider fell out right next to my feet…)

Anyways the guy showed me some small ant hills in the walkway and a possibly developing hornet nest on an eave and there are some small wasp nests under the light fixtures on the front porch. Even last year I see them flying around and poking around but never to the point of being a bother. He told me that once they get under the fixtures or the eaves they will try to get into the walls of the house and then they become an expensive issue.

I’m not one to immediately jump to the first solution to a problem that I wasn’t really even aware of. I wanted to ask you all here on your thoughts on the topic. I explained to the pest control guy that while I don’t mind keeping bugs out of the house I don’t want to use anything that would affect bugs outside or get into the ground water or nearby wetlands. He says he uses only the safest products but “safest” is a relative term and I don’t have enough knowledge to judge what is safe or not. Spraying stuff around the foundation, swapping the eaves and lights and laying out “granules” for the ants seems like something that could damage the bugs outside and impact other critters like birds and frogs.

But I am also a fairly new homeowner and i don’t want to neglect possible issues with wasps, hornets or ants that could cause problems later.