Cockroaches are sneaky little crawlers that use small crevices as their hiding spot. But the creatures have to come from somewhere right? The most common entry point for cockroaches is the drain. And cockroaches in the drain come from the sewer that leads into the outside underground.
And by “drains”, all the drains inside your home are meant and not just the shower drain or the flood drain. Kitchens attract cockroaches because they can get food from there. That is why the kitchen sink is also a prime spot for roach infestation as many left-over food bits are flushed down the kitchen sink drain.
But why do these roaches choose various drains to gain entry into your house?
Why Are Roaches Coming Out Of My Drain?
A combination of many factors makes suitable conditions for cockroaches to make drains around your home the perfect entry point.
Access to and from the Outside World
Cockroaches are creepers and they live in constant danger of being trampled or poisoned to death, if not eaten by something else. Therefore they seek a secure hiding place where other predators will not attack them. What is a better place than the inside of a inhabited house as long as they can remain hidden?
Therefore the drain pipes become their easy access to the interior of a house and also as an exit from it.
On top of that, when it is time for cockroaches to lay their eggs, they look for a warm and secure place devoid of any predators. Using their keen senses they can detect sources of warmth and food.
If you are seeing cockroaches in the shower drain, it is because they could sense the warmth from your shower water and just crawled their way toward the source of it.
Dampness
One reason why pest control agencies keep asking households to check if their taps are leaking or not is that many insects, especially cockroaches thrive in damp places.
Humans would not be able to stay comfortably in a wet and damp place for long but cockroaches do not begrudge it. This is primarily because they need water to survive and they will drink whatever water comes their way- whether it is your bath water, vegetable wash water, or the grossest of them all, sewage water.
Food, although an important factor of survival for cockroaches, they can still survive in the most unlikely of conditions without food for quite a while. But what they absolutely cannot do without is water. A cockroach will die after approximately a week of not getting any water.
Without any question, drains of any sort provide their most steady supply of water, and, this is not a presumption of cockroach psychology, but it makes sense for them to want to crawl up drains to want to access water all the time and whenever they need it.
It’s not like water comes out of the drain all the time so the cockroaches probably crawl through the pipes to be able to permanently access a stable source of water.
Dark
By nature, cockroaches are nocturnal creatures. This is kind of evolutionary owing to the fact they are constantly preyed upon. They use the cover of the dark to venture out of their hiding spots and forage for food and other resources.
Now drain pipes are sufficiently dark and roaches can easily access crevices in the wall through cracked pipes and then crawl out when all the lights go out.
The darkness of drain pipes does not attract cockroaches to the drains but is definitely a contributing factor to spotting roaches in drains.
Access to nutrients
Like all living beings, cockroaches need nourishment too. But their sources of nourishment vary vastly from what we may term edible food.
Cockroaches can survive on anything, especially rotten and filthy things. This is why the drains make such a good place for them to infest.
Kitchen drains are used to wash down leftover food particles from the kitchen and sometimes even food that has gone bad as well as portions of vegetables and fruits that have started to rot. These are all sources of nutrients for cockroaches.
Similarly, feces are a rich nutrient source for roaches and thus the sewer drains are the best place for them to infest.
The two most roach-infested spots in any house are the kitchen and bathroom. In your bathroom, there are soaps and shampoos that may contain animal fat and thus the water that is flowing out of the flood drain and shower drain are both nourishing the roaches.
This is why cockroaches crawl through the drains and lie in wait for the lights to be turned off. As soon as it is dark, they come out and start to look for food and water.
Another reason why the drains are so convenient for them is that they can easily escape through it should they sense danger and because it is a tiny spot, most of their predators cannot follow after them if they escape through drains.
Drain pipes act as pathways between Places
After many years of usage without any maintenance, pipes are bound to show small cracks on their surface. These cracks are exploited by the creeping and crawling cockroaches who use the pipes as a pathway between places.
If the pipes are cracked then the water will seep into the wall which also starts to show cracks. Such a scenario is perfect for cockroaches who can see the holes in the wall as entry and exit points alongside drains.
In shared spaces such as apartments and condos, if one unit gets a cockroach infestation, other adjacent units may also suffer from the same because all the drain pipes have a common main pipe that leads to the sewer lines.
This same common pipe is used by cockroaches to crawl through the drain pipes of multiple units and use the drains as access points.
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The Bottom Line
Needless to say, cockroaches are very dirty insects and carry various germs and bacteria on their body whose trail they leave behind as they crawl through various places.
This is a concerning situation as people use kitchen sinks to wash ingredients before cooking and if it is being contaminated because of cockroaches, then it can cause gastrointestinal issues.
Similarly, in the bathrooms many people keep their soaps uncovered and cockroaches get to have a field day running all over it, causing many skin infections. Roaches in the drains are never a good thing and steps must be taken to exterminate the insects as soon as possible.