Carpet Moth Damage Beneath Sofas and Wardrobes in Wokingham

Traffic Protects, Storage Does Not

Larvae need stillness. A hallway with children running through it all day is a poor habitat. The problem in a family home is not the busy floor — it is the square metres of floor that have been covered by storage since the day it went in.

The List, In Order of Likelihood

1. Under beds, especially divans with drawers, and especially where storage boxes fill the space
2. Under and behind toy storage — units, boxes, baskets pushed against a wall
3. The sofa: underneath it, and the hessian and webbing on its underside
4. Under a wardrobe or chest, and the carpet behind it
5. The base of built-in wardrobes, behind whatever is stacked there
6. Under a cot or nursery furniture that has not moved since it was assembled
7. Behind the door in any bedroom, where nothing reaches
8. The airing cupboard, among stored bedding

What To Look For

• Irregular thinning or grazed patches, not clean holes
• A bare area matching the footprint of a box or a bed leg
• 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
• Damage on the underside of anything wool that has been on the floor

Check the Contents, Not Just the Floor

In a child's room the things in the storage are as likely to be affected as the floor under it, and they are easier to deal with.

• Wool and part-wool blankets, especially older ones
• Dressing-up clothes, which are often stored for years between phases
• Soft toys with wool or natural filling — most modern ones are synthetic and are not at risk
• Sheepskin rugs and liners
• Outgrown clothes boxed for a sibling
• Anything inherited or handed down and stored since

Making It Manageable

1. Do one room at a time rather than the whole house in an afternoon
2. Pull the boxes out from under one bed and look at the carpet with a torch
3. Look at the bottom of the boxes as well as the floor
4. Vacuum the exposed area including right into the edges, and empty the vacuum outside
5. Put the boxes back on something rather than directly on the carpet if you can
6. Photograph anything you find, with the date, before clearing it

Raising storage off the carpet even slightly changes the conditions, because it lets air and light in and makes it vacuumable.

Treatment starts from £220. Tell us which rooms have storage under the beds — in a family house that is usually where the scope actually is.