Carpet Moth Damage Beneath Sofas and Wardrobes in Ascot

Why This Is Harder in a Big House

• There are more pieces of heavy furniture than anyone will move in a year
• Several rooms are used rarely, so nothing in them moves at all
• Guest rooms and spare rooms are made up and then left, sometimes for months
• Rooms that are unheated for part of the year get visited even less
• Nobody has a mental model of the whole house at floor level, because nobody is in all of it

Build the Rotation Around Risk, Not Around Rooms

Not every piece of furniture is equally likely. Put the highest risk items in the rotation more often and the rest less.

1. Highest: divan beds in rooms that are rarely slept in — dark, still, and undisturbed for months at a time
2. High: wardrobes and chests in guest and spare rooms, particularly with wool garments stored in them
3. High: sofas and armchairs in a formal room that is used a few times a year
4. Moderate: heavy furniture in rooms in daily use — still worth checking, but disturbed more often
5. Low: anything on hard flooring with no rug and nothing wool nearby

What Two Minutes Actually Involves

• Slide rather than drag, and get help with anything heavy
• Use a torch held low and almost parallel to the floor — raking light shows what overhead light flattens
• Look at the floor AND at the underside of the item, especially the hessian and webbing under upholstery
• Look along the skirting for a foot either side
• Photograph anything you find, with the date, before moving it further
• Write down which item you did, so the rotation means something

What You Are Looking For

• Irregular thinning or grazed patches, rather than clean holes
• A bare area matching the footprint of what was standing there
• Fine silky webbing, sometimes holding grains of debris
• A sandy debris the colour of the carpet
• Small cream larvae inside cases the colour of what they are eating

The Rooms To Put First

If the rotation only ever gets through half the house, make sure it is the right half.

1. Any bedroom that is made up but not slept in
2. A dressing room or box room used for storage
3. A formal sitting or dining room used occasionally
4. A room that is closed off or unheated for part of the year
5. Any room where the carpet is wool and the furniture is heavy

Treatment starts from £220. Tell us how many rooms are in regular use and how many are not — in a larger property that ratio predicts the scope better than the floor area does.