Annoying Flies

Larianne

My friend is having trouble with an alarming amount of flies in her house. I was over in her place a few weeks back and it was like I was in the Australian outback. Apparently it has got worse.

What can she do? She already has one of those fly killer lamps in the kitchen but there is still a large amount of flies around the house.

Wade in the Sea

Larianne wrote: »

My friend is having trouble with an alarming amount of flies in her house. I was over in her place a few weeks back and it was like I was in the Australian outback. Apparently it has got worse.

What can she do? She already has one of those fly killer lamps in the kitchen but there is still a large amount of flies around the house.

There are a number of possibilities here. What sort of flies are they, and are we talking about 10s or 100s?

If they are just the regular small black house fly and you are finding them concentrated in one room/area mostly there is a good chance you have something dead nearby, most likely under the floorboards. Did she have a rat or mouse problem during the winter?

Sorry hope you weren't just eating when you read that :-)

Larianne

Well when I was in her house, there was quite a few in the kitchen and then again in the downstairs toilet.

They were small flies congregating together. In the small downstairs toilet there were about 10-15, I can't remember the number in the kitchen but it was something I noticed when I came into the house.

I'll ask about any type of rat/mice problem they might have had.

npmurph

I think we have a dead bird in a blocked up fireplace in our bedroom. Over the last 2 days we have had over 100 flies. They are not very fast and my wife came up with a great idea of hoovering them up which works great.
They are coming up thru the floorboards. Anyone any idea how to get rid of them.

Dusty87

Larianne wrote: »

Well when I was in her house, there was quite a few in the kitchen and then again in the downstairs toilet.

They were small flies congregating together. In the small downstairs toilet there were about 10-15, I can't remember the number in the kitchen but it was something I noticed when I came into the house.

I'll ask about any type of rat/mice problem they might have had.

I used to know a fella who set up a small diy compost heap out the back However the amout of 'food flies' as he called them that were around was unrel. If a window was left open they were in like a shot. They sound very like what your on about. Does her bins be open or anything??

Wade in the Sea

npmurph wrote: »

I think we have a dead bird in a blocked up fireplace in our bedroom. Over the last 2 days we have had over 100 flies. They are not very fast and my wife came up with a great idea of hoovering them up which works great.
They are coming up thru the floorboards. Anyone any idea how to get rid of them.

Sounds about right. The flies are usually small and slow as they have just pupated and come from darkness to light. There is usually a hole somewhere in the floor or wall that they are coming from. You can try sealing it up but at some stage you are going to have to bite the bullet and lift the board. Not pretty

Hovering flies mid air..........Why not there's no football on tonight.

Leinster D

Hi all,

I am having a similar problem at the moment.

A few months ago we heard some mouse/rat scratching's either under floor boards or in and around pipe and drains that run undeath the floorboards of our downstairs loo and utility room. We thought it was more the pipes but were not certain. We never had any signs of anything inside the house. We blocked up any visible entry points with steel foam and expanding foam just in case around the exterior of our home around the external insulation, any small gaps anywhere, around external pipes outside etc. We also called a pest control company and they thought the issue may have been the pipe and drain network that runs from rear garden underneath utility room / downstairs loo room and out to road at the front of the house. They put a few poison bait traps down manholes in our rear garden suspended on coat hangers and the bait was taken. They then put down a rat flap in this pipe to stop anything running up along pipes so nothing can come up pipe network and can only go out (1 one way type system). We also put more bait down again on coat hangers down the manholes. It seemed to work as the scratching stopped and the bait has not been touched and its been over 2 months now.

However for the past 2 weeks we have started seeing a lot of large slow moving buzzing flies downstairs and mostly in the downstairs loo and utility room and the odd one or two in the adjoining kitchen room. They are almost dead as they are so slow moving and make a buzzing sound like a blue bottle. We are probably seeing about 10 a day at this stage. We simply are killing them when we see them and also spraying RAID fly spray on them and in the area as well as a homemade peppermint spray on the area also. We cannot pin point where exactly they are coming from and if there its due to some organic matter, waste or worse still a dead rodent lodged somewhere in drains or floors. The rat flap also perhaps may be causing a blockage somewhere too in drain network somewhere perhaps?

Any ideas on how to get rid of these flies and what should the next steps be? I don't want to really call a pest control company as I am hoping we can resolve it ourselves, if possible, and its also not as bad as having a rodent problem- like before.

Thanks,