What Makes a Hidden Area Dangerous
Three conditions: animal fibre to eat, darkness, and being left alone for long enough for a generation to complete. Under a wardrobe meets all three. So does a sealed box of blankets in a spare room, and the box is often worse, because the food and the shelter are the same object.
Furniture at least gets moved when a house is redecorated or someone drops something behind it. A storage box can sit for three years without being opened, and everything in it is edible.
The Standing Furniture List
- Divan beds, especially with drawers
- Wardrobes and chests, and the carpet behind as well as under
- Sofas and armchairs, and the hessian and webbing underneath
- The carpet edge against the skirting, all the way round
- Fitted cupboard bases and back corners
- Under rugs and on their undersides
The Packed and Stored List, Which Matters More Here
- Boxes of bedding and blankets, particularly wool ones
- Vacuum-compression bags — airtight if the seal holds, and a sealed food container if it does not and something was already in there
- Kit bags and holdalls that have been packed since the last move
- Uniform, mess dress and formal wear in garment bags
- Carpet offcuts and rugs rolled and stood in a corner
- Boxed clothing at the bottom of a wardrobe or under a bed
- Anything that came back from a storage unit and has not been unpacked
The compression-bag trap. A properly sealed bag with clean, moth-free contents is one of the best things you can do. A bag packed in a hurry with something already in it, or one whose seal has failed, is a dark, still, undisturbed larder. The bag is only as good as what went in and whether it held.
Where Standing and Stored Meet
The most common site in a house like this is the floor underneath the stack: boxes on a carpet in a spare room, in a garage, or under a bed. The carpet beneath them has not seen light or movement since the boxes went down, and whatever is in the boxes is directly on top of it.
If there is one place to look first, that is it.
How To Check Stored Items Without Unpacking Everything
- Start with anything wool, feather or fur — those are the only things at real risk
- Open the box and look at the top surface and the corners, with a torch
- Look for fine silky webbing, small cream larvae in a case, and a sandy debris in the folds
- Shake out one item from the middle rather than only the top
- Look at the carpet the box has been standing on
- Re-seal it properly, or bag it clean, before it goes back
What To Do With Something You Find
- Bag it before it moves through the house, not after
- Wash it hot if the item allows, or have it professionally cleaned
- Freezing works on smaller items if it is genuinely cold enough and long enough — a domestic freezer at its coldest, for at least a week, with the item sealed and dry
- Do not put a suspect item back in a wardrobe with clean woollens
- Do not carry it through carpeted rooms — take it out the shortest way
Treatment starts from £220. Tell us what is in storage and what has recently come out of it — in a household that moves, that is usually the part of the picture that explains the rest.
Carpet moths in Sandhurst? Pest Services Berkshire treats carpet moths from £220. Carpet Moth Control in Sandhurst has the full detail, or call 0118 336 1366.