Straight answers · Pests in UK homes
Pests gone.
For damn good.
You have seen something in the kitchen and every search result wants to send someone round. Here you find out what you are actually looking at. How it got in, and how it keeps getting in. And what deals with that instead of just killing what you can see.
- What it actually is
- What gets rid of it
- What it should cost
Start with what you can see
26 in-depth guides, and counting
Silverfish, and the second species nobody tells you about
Common silverfish only lay eggs in damp, so drying the room usually fixes it. Grey silverfish, found in the UK in 2014, breed at lower humidity.
Read it →House spiders, false widows, and what actually bites in Britain
Hospital admissions for spider bites in England have doubled in a decade. They went from 47 a year to 100. Both of those facts are true at once.
Read it →Woodlice indoors are a damp reading, not an infestation
They cannot breed in your house and they cannot survive a dry room. Both are the reason a woodlice spray is usually money for nothing.
Read it →A wasp nest, and whether it is actually your problem
A UK wasp nest dies over winter and is never used again. That turns the question from how to kill it into how close it is to you.
Read it →Flies in the house, and the two things that actually cause it
A sudden mass of flies indoors is a reading on a source, not a fly problem: infested food matter, or a dead animal something has laid eggs in.
Read it →The moths you can see are not the ones eating your jumper
Adult clothes moths have no working mouthparts and eat nothing at all, which is why spraying the flying ones changes nothing.
Read it →Flying ant day is not a day, and you do not need to buy anything
The largest study done on this found flying ants on as many as 96% of days across the summer. There is no single date and nothing to treat.
Read it →Mice, and the 6mm gap that is doing all the work
A house mouse gets through a gap about the width of a pencil. Until that gap is shut, every mouse you kill just leaves a vacancy.
Read it →A rat in the garden is a different problem from a rat in the house
Outdoors it is food and shelter, and the animal may be living three hundred metres away on somebody else's land. Indoors it is a hole in your building.
Read it →Who is responsible for pest control: you, the landlord, the freeholder or the council
Most people arrive at this question assuming they are the one paying. In a rented home in England they usually should not be, and it turns on why the pests got in.
Read it →Carpet beetles: the adult is harmless, the larva is the one eating your jumper
The beetle on the windowsill feeds on pollen and is trying to get out. The damage is a hairy larva you have not found, living on something with protein in it.
Read it →Mouse or rat droppings: reading the evidence when you have no animal to look at
Two measurements settle most of it. The part nobody publishes is everything else that gets mistaken for both, from shrews to beetle frass.
Read it →Fleas in a house with no pet: the cocoon is the whole answer
Fleas wait in a cocoon in the carpet for something to walk past. That is why an empty house bites the person who moves into it.
Read it →What pest control actually costs, from the only rate cards anyone publishes
No private firm in Britain publishes a price list, so every UK average you can find is unsourced. Councils publish theirs, and they disagree by two to one on the same job.
Read it →Fruit flies vs fungus gnats: the fruit bowl or the plant pot
Fruit flies breed in fermenting food, fungus gnats in damp compost. The vinegar trap that clears one does nothing to the other, which makes it a free test.
Read it →How to get rid of fruit flies, start to finish
Bin whatever they are breeding in, then trap the adults that are left. Spray and traps only reach adults; most of an infestation is still eggs and larvae.
Read it →Fruit fly repellent: what scents actually do, and what works instead
Peppermint oil repels fruit flies in a lab, then fades within a week in the field. Vinegar and lemon pull them in, and the fridge does what no scent can.
Read it →Fruit flies in plants are usually fungus gnats, so fix the compost
Tiny flies lifting off a houseplant are nearly always fungus gnats breeding in damp compost. Every fix by the stage it hits, and when it really is fruit flies.
Read it →Does fly spray kill fruit flies? Yes, the ones it hits
Fly spray kills every fruit fly it hits and none of the eggs and larvae in the fruit, and a typical label says to get food out of the way before you spray. Where spray actually fits.
Read it →What do fruit flies look like, and how to tell them from the other tiny flies
Red eyes, a stocky body, a tan front and a dark rear. Three other tiny flies share its size, so the tell is shape, movement and where it breeds.
Read it →Fruit flies in the house, and how to find what they're breeding in
Every fruit fly in the room hatched from something wet and organic in the house. Where they breed, room by room, and the overnight bag test that proves a drain.
Read it →Fruit fly larvae: what they look like, where they live, and what to bin
Dirty-white maggots 2.5-5 mm long, feeding near the surface of anything fermenting. That is why a bad patch can be cut away, and why the larvae that matter are the ones off the fruit.
Read it →Where do fruit flies come from? Mostly in on the fruit
They arrive as eggs too small to see on fruit already going off, or fly in through a window, then breed in whatever is fermenting. Every route in, sourced.
Read it →Apple cider vinegar for fruit flies: why it works, and why the washing-up liquid matters
Cider vinegar smells of fermentation, which is what fruit flies are really hunting, and one drop of washing-up liquid stops them standing on it.
Read it →Homemade fruit fly trap: what works, and why most of them leak
A jar, cider vinegar and a drop of washing-up liquid will catch fruit flies. The part nobody explains is how they get back out, and the fix for it.
Read it →A fruit fly trap, and why most of them let the flies back out
Every trap's way in is also a way out. What keeps fruit flies in: a funnel, a dark middle, one small exit away from the light, and a liquid they sink in.
Read it →No callout to sell you.
Nearly everything written about pests in this country comes from someone who wants to come and do the work. Here you get the answers I would give you over the fence. What you have actually got. How it is getting in. And what I would do about it if it were my house.
Nobody pays for the verdicts
No pest-control firm owns this site, and nothing here is a paid-for opinion. When a treatment is the wrong answer to your problem, or when the job is a bag of wire wool rather than a contract, the page says so. If a recommendation ever earns me anything, the page discloses it plainly, right where it sits.
The way in, first
Every answer starts with the same question. How are they getting in? Kill what you can see and leave the gap open and they are back by autumn. Only now you have paid for it twice.
No waffle
Short answers first, the why underneath. You leave every page knowing what to do next, not with ten tabs open.
The questions everyone asks
Not to you. They do not bite and are not known to carry disease. The things at risk are paper and starch, so a box of documents in a damp cupboard is in more danger than you are.
Hardly ever. Around 650 spider species live in the UK, twelve have been known to bite people, and none living here is deadly. The ones that can bite do it defensively, when they are trapped against skin.
Not sound timber. They eat material that is already rotting, so they turn up where wood has gone soft rather than being the reason it did. Finding them on a joist is a moisture finding, not a pest one.
Somewhere damp and close, with something starchy in it. They breed inside the building rather than wandering in from the garden, and the food anchors them more reliably than the water does.
Usually of damp, yes. They breathe through gills and die of water loss in a dry room, so a population living happily indoors is telling you that room is not dry. They also do not breed indoors, which means every one you see walked in from outside.
Fewer insects and fewer gaps. A house with a lot of spiders in it is a house with a lot of insects in it, because that is what they came for. Outside lighting near doors and windows is the biggest single lever most people have, and it beats anything you could spray.
They were already there. Males of many species mature in autumn and start walking about looking for a mate, so what changes is not how many spiders you have but how many are moving.
See all questions, or got one that is not here? send it over and the useful ones get a proper page.