The centipedes are there because the environment provides a good living, food, shelter, and water. Look deeply around and find out why and eliminate that environment and they will go away without the need for you to spray any kind of poison that will adversly affect you.
Centipedes are carnivours, they eat other bugs so there must also be other insects in your apartment.

Where are you located? Climate might be of interest here.

I have to take exception with one of your comments, lol! "I live alone and have no pets, so I could spray whatever is needed."

Not so! Inhalation or contact with many of these pesticides would affect YOU, my friend. You're pretty important, I think.

I have had quite a bit of success with boric acid products for house centipedes. I discovered an aerosol boric acid that is extremely useful to spray along entries, into cracks and corners, etc. Powered boric acid an also be used in cupboards (under the sink), etc.

The aerosol product I use is called Perma-Dust, but there are probably others on the market.

"The centipedes are there because the environment provides a good living, food, shelter, and water. Look deeply around and find out why and eliminate that environment and they will go away without the need for you to spray any kind of poison that will adversly affect you.
Centipedes are carnivours, they eat other bugs so there must also be other insects in your apartment."

I assume that they are finding the type of environment they need in the crawl space under the condo (dark, damp, probably many other insects. I do not know why they are coming into my unit, it is clean, dry, and I have not found any other type of insect (and believe me, I have looked!). I vacuum the carpet daily, I get into all the corners, I've checked everywhere.

rhizo_1:

I live in New Jersey.

So Boric Acid will work? And I could find it at Home Depot or Lowes? How often do I have to use it? Any side effects? Thanks!

Yes, you can find it at most any hardware type store. It's probably the safest, really effective treatment you could use.....especially if you don't have pets or children who would get into it. I have house centipedes as well, but I have a big, two hundred year old farmhouse and it's moist and dank with all the springs in our ground. I have gazillions of house spiders, crickets on occasion, once I had a hoard of frogs in my kitchen.....salamanders in my cellar and occasionally snakes. What's a centipede or two, LOL. It's a whole ecosystem in here.

foto...house centipedes enter the house 'just because they feel like it', believe me!

You can find boric acid powder (Roach Pruf is boric acid) at almost any garden center or pest control department. The aerosol might be a bit more difficult to find locally, though you can find it on line. I strongly recommend the aerosol for barrier sprays across doors, windows, etc. Though you shouldn't inhale boric acid particles, it has no toxic fumes that can be dangerous.

The reason I asked where you lived was just to make sure you weren't in some tropical location where we might be dealing with a real scary kind of centipede.

Calliope, frogs in the kitchen, lololol!

Ordering online is my new favorite past time so that works out well!

Is there any website you would recommend where I could get these Boric Acid products?

It seems as if there are different brands and types of products, are they all one-in-the-same, or would one brand work better than the other?

Thanks again!

Just be a good label reader. You don't want a bunch of other ingredients other than boric acid. The only aerosol product I've used is the Perma-Dust, so I can't help you compare quality.

I'm serious, rhizo. It gave me an almost 'biblical' fear when I saw them. Never anything like that before, nor afterwards. They likely were little toadlings, but sure looked more like tree frogs to me. Their skin was not bumpy. Tiny little things. So many I had to carefully scoop them repeatedly up in a dustpan so I wouldn't hurt them and put them outside. The door to the outside was by the dog's water, and that's where they were. My extension agent couldn't explain it.

Can you tell are very careful with chemical use here, even though I am a licensed applicator? Our environment is soft, soft, soft unless we need to get into the arsenal. That's what is so sad, people usually don't need to, and if they understand what they are dealing with, whether it is really damaging, and how not to injure the natural predators they wouldn't.

Great, I'm gonna look for Perma-Dust. Thanks!

I found powder called Hot Shot MaxAttrax Roach Killing Powder with Boric Acid. The ingredients list Orthoboric Acid as 99% and other ingredients as 1%.

ORTHOboric Acid is what you meant when you said Boric Acid? Or is Orthoboric Acid different?

Thanks!

If it weren't so sad I would say it's amusing...

A few hours ago I spread the Hot Shot MaxAttrax Roach Killing Powder with OrthoBoric Acid around the entire condo. I made sure to hit the floor around every wall, under the heaters, in all kitchen and bathroom spaces, etc. etc. etc.

When I got to the office and did the same thing until I came to the desk. I did not feel like moving it away from the wall so I just shook the powder -down the wall- so it fell behind the desk. I looked under the desk and saw the powder down there, it was pretty thick with dust. Again, I shook the powder against the wall (important to remember).

So I get home a few minutes ago and sit down at the computer, what do you think I saw?? Right up the same wall that the OrthoBoric powder totally dusted was a baby house centipede running around on the wall as if he were having a jolly old time. No pain, no death,.. nothing.

Just my luck, huh?

Don't worry, it doesn't kill them immediately but it will do the job. Boric acid works as a drying agent and an exoskeleton abrasive. Hopefully, lots of centipedes will dance around in that dust and carry some back to where EVER the heck they are coming from!

Calliope, I found a baby 'possum in my kitchen once. I never figured out where it came from either! Never did feel quite the same in that old place after that, and moved out not long after, lol!

Aww man, that might not work then.

I thought that Boric Acid would stop them from coming into my condo unit.

My building has 20 units, 2 floors high and 10 wide. Since the building is so long there is a huge crawlspace underneath, I'm sure it's thriving with house centipedes, there's nothing I can do to stop them.

What I need to do is keep them down there and stop them from coming into my unit.

The Boric Acid might kill them after they are in my condo and have their way with me, but I would much rather not have them in here at all.

Is there anything to repel them completely? Or should I just get an exterminator?

Calliope I think the frogs were there to eat the centipedes!
:)
I wish I knew a way to keep the centipedes out. I can't stop my basement from being a haven, even though I run the dehimidifier down there nonstop. I set up sticky traps but I am only catching a few.

"Centipedes are carnivours, they eat other bugs so there must also be other insects in your apartment."

That's the rumor, but I have never seen one eat. I have the kind that are tan colored with long thin legs and are up to 2" long. They seem much too fragile to eat an insect of similar size. I imagine a cockeroach would easily win in a fight but I have never had any cockeroaches so maybe they keep them away. Maybe centipedes mostly eat silverfish or dust mites?