Can Carpet Moths Spread From Room to Room in Henley-on-Thames?

How They Move Unaided

Adults are poor fliers, stay near floor level, avoid open lit space and cover short distances. Unassisted, they take months to get from one room to the next.

• Through doorways at floor level, especially with a gap under the door
• Along a hallway, following the skirting
• Up a staircase, using the treads
• Between floors through gaps around pipe runs and light fittings

How They Move Fast

In your hands, in an afternoon.

1. Moving a rug to safety. The commonest single mistake. A rug with larvae in it, rolled and carried to a spare room, has just colonised the spare room
2. Moving upholstered furniture out of the affected room
3. Taking textiles out of a wardrobe and putting them somewhere else in the house
4. Vacuuming an affected room and then a clean one without emptying the machine in between
5. Putting things into a loft or garage 'until it is sorted', which converts a room problem into a storage problem that will come back

Containing It Properly

1. Keep the doors of affected rooms closed
2. Do not move rugs, upholstery or stored textiles between rooms
3. Empty the vacuum outside after every room, not at the end
4. Do not take anything from an affected room into a wardrobe elsewhere
5. Do not put anything into the loft or garage as a temporary measure
6. Treat the adjacent rooms as well as the affected one

If You Genuinely Need To Move Something Valuable

Sometimes there is a good reason — a rug that is going to be cleaned, an item that has to be out of the way for the work.

1. Bag it where it stands, sealed, before it moves at all
2. Roll a rug rather than folding it, pile side out, along the length. Folding creases permanently and can crack an old foundation
3. Take it out of the house, not to another room
4. Take it straight to the specialist if it is going for cleaning — a bagged rug in the back of a car for a fortnight is not storage
5. Do not use the loft or garage. Unheated storage slows the problem and preserves it; it does not end it
6. Tell whoever is receiving it that it has moth damage, so they handle it accordingly

Why Treating One Room Rarely Ends It

By the time adults are visible in a room, eggs have usually been laid in more than one. Add the movement of textiles between rooms, which almost everybody does before they call, and a single-room scope is usually already out of date.

Treatment starts from £220. Tell us what you have moved and where you moved it to — it is not a criticism, it is the fastest way to work out what the scope should be.