Rodent Control in Firestone Park, Akron

Harvey Firestone started Firestone Park in 1915 to house workers from his tire plant, and hundreds of homes went up in the first year alone. The streets curve around a central park shaped like the Firestone shield emblem, and the neighborhood runs roughly from Archwood Avenue south to Waterloo Road, with the old Aster Avenue business district in the middle. Homes were built for workers of different income levels, so you'll see small cottages, bungalows and larger two-stories on the same few blocks.

For a Firestone Park exterminator, that means old Akron at its most typical. The houses are well built, but the basements have a hundred winters of freeze and thaw behind them, and a lot of lots have a detached garage out back.

Every October, the same basement corner

Most Firestone Park basements are stone, early block or early poured concrete, and the mice tend to use the same doors. The sill line where the framing sits on the wall. The old coal chute. A window well that fills with leaves. The hole where the gas line came through in 1950-something and never got packed. If you've trapped mice every fall for years in the same corner, the gap is still open. Basement rodent work paired with sealing the old foundation is what finally breaks the pattern.

When mice have had a few winters to climb the walls, they end up in the attic, and in these steep-roofed houses that's a tight, hard-to-reach space. Droppings on top of the insulation and flattened tunnels through it mean it's time to think about cleaning up the attic insulation, once the mice themselves are gone.

Detached garages and backyard gardens

The detached garages here are close to a century old in places. Slabs crack and settle, wood sills soften, and door seals wear through. Rats burrow along the slab edge, especially near a vegetable garden, a compost bin or the spot under the bird feeder. Mice move into the boxes on the garage shelves. If that sounds familiar, have the garage looked at along with the house. The garage and shed page explains how that usually goes.

Kenmore sits just west with houses from the same boom years, so Kenmore's rodent calls sound a lot like the ones from here. Our walk-through for old Akron basements shows where to shine a flashlight before you call.

Six hundred houses in a year, and the same weak spots in Firestone Park

About 600 Firestone Park homes went up in a single year after 1915. Crews building that fast used the same methods street after street, so neighbors often share the same weak points. If the house next door had mice coming in where the porch meets the foundation, check yours in the same place. Basement windows deserve a hard look too. Where the original wood frames are still in, the bottom rail is usually the first part to rot. A soft sill on a basement window is wide enough for a mouse long before it looks like a hole to you.

Alling DeForest laid out the curving boulevards around the park, and the Aster Avenue shops and the South Main corridor sit right up against the homes. Where the back lot of a storefront meets a backyard, rats work that edge. Trash, grease and stored pallets sit on one side, with a garden and a garage on the other. Business owners on Aster can read about rodent service for shops and restaurants. Homeowners on those blocks should watch for burrows along the back fence and know what rat control around the house looks like before the colony grows.

Around Firestone Park: Firestone Park (the shield-shaped park) · Aster Avenue business district · Archwood Avenue · Waterloo Road · South Main Street · Firestone Park Community Center (ZIP 44301)

Also serving Highland Square and West Akron, Goodyear Heights, Kenmore, North Hill, Ellet, Merriman Valley, Cuyahoga Falls, Stow, Barberton.