Hi All, I have just discovered my sofa is infested (big time) with WoodWorm (it collapsed!). It's now sat in the garden waiting for cremation; I have had a good look around the rest of the room (had a good clean-up) and can find no other evidence, should I be woried about the flooring joists, roof timbers, other furnature etc?
Would it cost much to get the house fumigated just in case?
Many thanks for any advice.
Probably wouldn't help at the moment as they've all just 'flown the nest'. Key thing is to stop them returning later this year.
What sort ? Got any bodies ? Got a hole diameter ?
Get out to a garden hardware shop and get yourself some yellow sticky fly papers. Try and catch them quickly, before they get to laying more eggs.
If your sofa got to the point of collapse though, they've probably been emerging for a year or two.
Fumigation won't help - needs to be liquid, applied in the right location. You're going to have to watch out for boreholes and frass appearing (for a couple of years), then spray as needed.
The real hazard depends on the species, the timber species of your sofa, and the timber species of any attractive food timber nearby.
woodworm only live in damp wood, the way to get rid of them is to fix any damp problem. The question is why was your sofa damp.
Fumigation etc is neither the solution nor an especially good idea.
NT
Not true. Some (powder post beetles, for example) are quite happy to lay into dry timber.
That's woodlice, not woodworm.
I've had them in kiln dried timber so the damp-wood thin is utter .......... rot!
Couldn't find any boddies, the holes quite small 0.5-0.75mm (as a guess). It was (was being the key word) old 1960's hard wood, nice and dry, I moved it about 2 years back and there was no sign then, now there's hundreds of holes near the joints. If the little ***ers attack structural timbers with the same speed they ate the sofa I could have a problem.
Hi,
Could be the sofa frame was made of ash which woodworm love. Have a careful look at the floor particularly where the feet of the sofa were.
Probably worth taking some boards up to see if there are any holes between board and joist. The worms don't emerge from wood until they turn into flying things.
cheers, Pete.
Also, AIUI the lifecycle of beetle is several years (but varies on species). So it would be worth keeping an eye out for flight holes / debris for some time to come.
HTH,
Alex.
Even kiln dried timber has moisture content (usually >10% IIRC).
My house had been in the past liberally peppered with "woodworm", some historic signs of deathwatch beetle too, it may have been damp at some point, true, but we also found some active stuff in some fairly dry areas of the house.
HTH,
Alex.
That can be a way of getting rid of them. Leave lots of their favourite food around at the time they emerge, ensuring all the eggs are laid in it. Burn this after the emerging season, and repeat for the next few years. This has been known to eliminate it from a badly infected place.
kiln dried timber is sometimes damp. It may get left outside while a lot is moved, and it may be raining at the time. Or it may be stored in a building that is not dry. Kiln dried merely means it was kiln dried, it doesnt guarantee ongoing dryness.
NT
You don't usually see the beetles themselves, if it's common furniture beetle yo uare talking about. The man from protim who did a de-infestation job for me said he had bee n doing it for years and had only ever seen a beetle in the laboratory. House structural timbers these days are impregnataed against attack but in older houses they might not be.
R
I lived in a scabby student flat once that had two wardrobes and a table riddled with the things. We moved in in the September and were amazed at how many of what we considered to be dead flies there were about the place. The next year at the start of summer it became aparrent where they were comming from. If you watched the exit holes for a bit you wouldn't have to wait long before you'd see one of the beetles emerge. There were hundreds of them and they would crunch if you squashed them. It got to the point where we put the wardrobes and the table in one room and left them to it.
I like the idea of sacrifical wardrobes!
Mary
WHAT???
I can't resist ... why were the students scabby?
Mary
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