SHADE, SUN AND WATER
Why a wooded Lakeside lot still gets mounds
Because fire ants only need the sunny parts, and every lot has some. Lakeside sits on the south end of Eagle Mountain Lake with a great deal of tree cover, and heavy canopy keeps soil cool enough that colonies rarely thrive beneath it. So they crowd into the gaps instead: the mowed opening around the house, the drive, a utility cut, the strip of grass running down toward the water.
That concentration is why spot-treating seems to work and then does not. You knock out the mound in the open patch, the ground stays exactly as attractive as it was, and another colony claims it within weeks. Bait spread over every open stretch of the property, rather than onto the domes, is what changes the result, because it removes queens instead of mounds.
PLAN, NOT LINE ITEM
How much fire ant work adds to a Lakeside bill
Nothing, because it belongs to both year-round programs rather than sitting beside them. Home Defender and Complete Home & Lawn Defense are priced by the square footage of the house, not by how much brush stands behind it, and houses in Lakeside are generally small enough to fall in the lower rows: $30 a month up to 1,500 square feet, then $33 to $38 up to 3,000.
Step across to Complete Home & Lawn Defense at those sizes and it becomes $40, or $40 to $51.50, with the entire yard treated rather than the perimeter and 25 feet out. You will have the number in hand before agreeing to anything, and there is no startup fee attached to either program.
Up to 1,500 sq ft
$30/mo
Home Defender, many houses here
1,500 to 3,000 sq ft
$33–$38/mo
The larger lakeside builds
Either size, whole yard
$40–$51.50/mo
Complete Home & Lawn Defense
Every number on this page comes from our published price list. Lakeside homes get the same table as everyone else; the instant quote reads your square footage and lot size and hands you your own line.
THREE HONEST CAVEATS
What baiting a Lakeside yard does not solve
It leaves the brush alone. The plans cover the residential yard and a treated boundary rather than the unmowed ground and woods past it, so colonies out there keep sending queens back toward the house. Repeat visits are the answer to that, and at a sensible price there is not a better one.
It will not clear the shed, the boat trailer or the woodpile. Those are shelter for spiders, scorpions and rodents rather than fire ant habitat, and they are handled by perimeter treatment, by exclusion, or in the case of rats and mice by the separate $25 a month add-on that rides on a year-round plan.
And it takes its time. Bait has to be gathered, carried down and fed to a queen, so a mound that is busy today will still be busy next week. Two to three weeks is the window, and if you are past that with no change, call and we come back at no charge.
ONE PLAN OR THE OTHER
Home Defender or the whole-yard plan, just for ants?
For fire ants alone, take the cheaper one. The identical broadcast bait goes across the identical whole lawn on both programs, so paying the difference buys nothing extra where mounds are concerned, and we would rather say that on the phone than after you have signed up.
Complete Home & Lawn Defense earns its price when the turf itself is in trouble: grubs chewing roots in late summer, armyworms arriving off adjacent rough ground, chiggers where the mowing stops. On a wooded Lakeside lot with brush at the boundary all three are plausible, but that is a lawn decision rather than a fire ant one.
FIRST TIME OUT
How we start on a Lakeside property
Finding the open ground
We map where the sun actually reaches, because on a wooded lot that is a small share of the acreage and it is where every colony will be sitting. Mounds get marked, and so does any ground opened up recently by a trench, a pad or new sod.
The spreader, then the edge
Bait goes across all of the mowed lawn, and the line where grass meets brush gets particular care, because that seam is the route in. We want a dry stretch of roughly 24 hours behind the application, so the date follows the forecast.
The house and the outbuildings
The rest of the plan happens the same day: foundation band, eaves, Delta Dust in the weep holes, and a look at the shed and any stacked wood. We will tell you which of those actually matter and which you can leave where they are.
