Carpet Moth Damage Beneath Sofas and Wardrobes in Twyford

Occupied Is Not the Same as Disturbed

What suppresses this is physical disturbance of the actual surface: being walked on, vacuumed, moved. Not people being in the building.

• The floor under a wardrobe is undisturbed whether or not anyone is home
• A hallway gets ten minutes of traffic a day, not ten hours
• Bedrooms are occupied at night, when nobody is walking on the floor
• The rooms that get the most genuine traffic — kitchen, hall — are often the ones with hard flooring
• Weekday emptiness adds warmth without movement, if the heating is on a timer

The List, In Order

1. Divan beds, especially with drawers
2. Under and behind wardrobes and chests
3. Under sofas and armchairs, and the hessian and webbing beneath
4. The carpet edge against the skirting, all round, worse behind furniture
5. The base of fitted wardrobes
6. Under rugs, and on their undersides
7. A spare room that is used a few times a year
8. The airing cupboard, among stored bedding

What To Look For

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

The Weekend Version of the Check

The practical problem in a commuter household is not willingness, it is daylight. So do it when you have some.

1. One heavy item, one room, one weekend morning. Rotate which
2. Slide rather than drag, and get help with anything heavy
3. Torch held low and almost parallel — raking light shows what overhead light flattens
4. Look at the floor AND the underside of the item
5. Vacuum the exposed area including into the edges, and empty outside
6. Photograph anything you find with the date before moving it further

Twelve items a year, rotating, is a genuine inspection programme and takes about twenty minutes in total across a year.

Treatment starts from £220. If the household is out all day, say so when you book — access is the thing worth sorting out first, not last.