Discovering an infestation of woodlice in the home can be one of the freakiest experiences. I remember heading into my larder and seeing them for the first time, and what I felt was nothing short of horror. Like most people, I’m okay with one or two, but hundreds if not thousands, no thank you.
You need to clean them off your house.
Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to keep woodlice out of your home. This also means getting rid of an existing infestation for good. These are approaches that are fine for your health and will simply be effective at clearing out your home and getting rid of these pests for good.
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Do Woodlice Cause Damage?
Firstly, you may be wondering whether woodlice are actual pests to have in the home. Surely, they can’t cause that much damage, right?
Well, while it’s true that woodlice won’t cause much damage if any if they’re outside in your yard, the same can’t be said if they’re living in your home.
Woodlice thrive in damp conditions and can cause a tremendous amount of destruction to wooden furniture as they burrow in to create their new homes and find safe places to raise their young.
Take a moment to think about all the wooden furniture, shelves, floors, and walls you have in your home. These are all wooden things that can be irreparably damaged if a woodlice infestation manages to find its way in.
This is why it’s so important to keep woodlice out in the first place, or then to get rid of them as soon as possible if they do manage to find their way in.
Prevent an Infestation
Preventing a problem is always better than curing it, so stopping woodlice coming into your home is still the best approach. If you’re reading this, then you’re probably already dealing with an existing infestation, in which case the following tips will help rid the infestation as well as stopping them from coming back.
Start by checking around your home for any damp places, and as the name suggests, damp wooden places. Think shelves, cupboards, furniture, and cabinets. If you find areas like this, move onto the next section below on how to clean it up.
Then check the outside of your property.
If you have a compost heap, rotting leaves in your gutters, or decomposing plants in or around your home, these are prime food sources for woodlice you’ll need to get rid of as quickly as possible. Even clearing out your gutters can be enough to stop them from coming back any time soon.
Start Cleaning Your Home of Mold, Damp, and Fungus
Like most bugs and insects, woodlice will enter your home looking for two things:
- Food
- Safety
It’s not uncommon for some woodlice to find refuge in your home, especially when the winter months roll around. Unfortunately, if there’s an available food source in your home, then droves of them will find their way in, and this is when you’ll start seeing problems.
As mentioned above, woodlice thrive in damp conditions where they can eat fungi, decomposing plants, and rotting food.
This means you need to check your larder and pantry for open and rotting food that may be attracting woodlice. You’ll also want to check, clean, and dry your bathroom, clearing it of any damp that could be attracting these unwanted house guests. Woodlice have also been known to eat paper and wallpaper, so any damp or peeling paper also may be causing them to come in.
You can dry your walls with a heater and clean debris using a vacuum cleaner. You can then spray damp and possibly infected areas with an anti-mildew spray, such as this one, to help eliminate the woodlice’s food source.
If you have gaps or entry points in your bathroom, like holes in your walls, it’s well worth sealing them with a sealant like this.
Use Electronic Pulsing Devices
A super-effective and super-modern approach to clearing out woodlice is installing an electronic pulsing device in your home. These are great little anti-bug devices that you simply plug into the wall, switch on,and get on with things.
Take the NeatMaster Ultrasonic Pest Repeller, the device I use, and recommend. It uses three kinds of wave (Bionic, electromagnetic, and ultrasonic) to blast high-frequency soundwaves throughout your home, leaving bugs doing everything they can to find the fastest way out.
Don’t worry, you won’t be affected by these soundwaves since the frequencies are far too high for humans to register. If you have pets like a cat or a dog, however, you’ll want to avoid this option because you won’t want to hurt them.
This device also works repelling all kinds of pests and bugs, not just woodlice, which is ideal if you find yourself trying to tackle all types of bug infestations at various points throughout the year.
Kill Woodlice Instantly
While woodlice will do what they can to hide and stay out of your way, if you do happen to see them or find their nest, you can kill them all instantly using bug-killing powder. I recommend using Rockwell Cimexa Dust Insecticide. Just sprinkle the powder onto the bugs, and they’ll be dead by the end of the day.
Powders like this tend to work well both indoors and out, but if it’s raining, they are much less effective, so make sure you wait until a dry day to carry out your extermination. Bug sprays like Raid Max can also be great for getting anti-bug spray into all those hard to reach places.
Just apply directly by pointing and spraying.
Use a Professional Pest Control Service
If worse comes to worst and you really can’t get rid of a woodlice infestation, it’s time to call in the big guns. Go online and search for which pest control services are operating in your area and see which handle woodlice infestations.
List down a couple of the best services with the highest customer ratings, and then call around to find the best price to suit you. It may take a couple of days for a professional to locate and remove the infestation, and it may be the most expensive solution on my list, but it’s well worth it once the woodlice are out.