I lived in a Texas house with several roommates. And cockroaches, BAD! We had tried the "bombs." It was quite a bit of work covering certain places with plastic, taking ALL laundry to laundromat during, and washing all dishes after. They didn't work as hoped for, then I read about Roach Prufe. I also read of the best application technique.
Start at one point of the home, somewhere along the perimeter where the floor meets the wall. Lay out a line along the entire perimeter of every room in the home. I realize some people will see this and immediately think of how they do not want this white powder line showing along the entire perimeter of their home. They prefer to just throw some piles of powder under the sink and behind the water heater, and maybe a few other hidden places. We had tried this hit/miss sprinkling powder before we read of the "perimeter technique" but we had roaches BAD and hit/miss did not work before.
The perimeter instructions told of how it was safe for people and pets; and to imagine how, for any roach in the home to get from the floor to the wall, you make him [or her, lol] crawl past the powder. It was 98% boric acid and 2% inert stuff to help it adhere to the roach so he could go share it in his nest. The only piece of perimeter where we did not lay out a line was in the bathroom along tub/floor run. We laid our line down using a flat-surfaced cafeteria tray and a 6 inch flex tape knife [drywall tool]. We only made the line about 1/8 inch wide and we got it looking quite uniform to where it looked sort of like a trim molding.
Every sign of a roach was GONE in less than a month! There would be dead ones lying around here and there during the time, but they would usually just go into their nests to die. We left the line down for another month or so, and then we got the crevice attachment on the vacuum cleaner and sucked up all of the lines where they were openly visible. I never saw another roach in that house for the three more years I lived there. I would imagine that other boric acids would work, but Roach Prufe was what we used. The instructions we had read said that if followed exactly as stated. ALL ROACHES WILL BE GONE! They were correct.
