What Causes Carpet Moth Infestations in Theale?

The Three Conditions

1. Food. Keratin — wool, silk, feather, fur, hair, felt
2. Darkness and stillness
3. Time. Long enough, undisturbed, for generations to build up

An outbuilding supplies all three better than any room in the house does, which is why a population there is usually older and larger than anything indoors by the time anyone notices.

Why Cold Is Not the Protection People Think

This is the belief worth correcting, because it is the reason outbuildings get left out of treatment scopes.

• Cold slows development. It does not end it
• A population can carry a winter in a garage or loft and resume in spring
• Larvae are the overwintering stage and they are well suited to it
• A brief cold snap does nothing at all — the freezing that kills larvae needs to be sustained, at genuine freezer temperatures, for days rather than hours
• Which is why an unheated space produces its adults in spring, and why people conclude the problem is new when it is years old

What Is Actually Feeding Them Out There

• Rolled carpet and underlay — the most concentrated food source most properties contain
• Rugs, rolled or folded
• Upholstered furniture under dust sheets
• Boxed bedding, blankets and clothing
• Camping gear and sleeping bags
• Animal bedding, feed and hay
• Old coats and boots hanging by a back door
• Dead insects and bird debris accumulated in a loft over years

How It Reaches the House

1. A connecting door from an integral garage
2. A back door in constant use
3. A loft hatch on a landing
4. Gaps around pipe runs and light fittings in an upstairs ceiling
5. Carried, in the items themselves — the commonest route of all

Which explains a pattern people find baffling: the room worst affected is the one nearest the connecting door or under the hatch, rather than the one with the best carpet.

The Ordinary Indoor Causes, Still True

• Second-hand rugs and upholstered furniture
• Items out of storage
• Belongings from a previous address
• Old felt underlay that was already there
• Things left by a previous occupant

What To Change

1. Get rid of carpet offcuts you are not going to use
2. Store textiles sealed and off the floor, not loose and stacked
3. Look in the garage and from the loft hatch once a year, in spring
4. Include storage areas in any treatment rather than the rooms alone
5. Do not treat cold as protection — it is a pause, not a solution
6. Seal the loft hatch, and gaps around upstairs fittings and pipe runs

Treatment starts from £220. If there is a garage, loft, shed or outbuilding with anything textile in it, include it in what you tell us — treating the rooms alone is what makes this an annual event.