Flies in loft

Look for the remains of a dead squirrel or similar under the boards. John

The flys are due to the corpse that is under the chip board

Used to work in a 19th Century 'gentleman's mansion,' a small one as these things go, and there were always flies in the attic during the winter. Think they got in during the summer and couldn't find their way out. Don't know if the servants, who would have lived up there originally, had that problem. In my time, of coourse, the windows were never opened.

Erme - you haven't just bought Horbury Villa in Ladbroke Grove, west London, by any chance?

My first guess would be dead rodent in the loft - could be a dead squirrel of pigeon. I once had a dead pigeon in the loft followed by a short period of flies and shortly afterwards hundreds of baby spiders abseiling down from the loft hatch.

Your own, scaled-down version of The Royal Tournament!

Nick

Today there were almost no new flies, maybe none at all, maybe just a few left from yesterday. I don't think there's a dead animal anywhere but ascertaining that for sure would be impossible. I did look where I could see, but that's not really very much. I'll see what there is tomorrow.

On 07/10/2025 13:26, Simon Simple wrote: <snip>

CLuster Flies? About 10 years ago my parents had a problem with them. If I remember, they emerge from the garden/ground and seek the warmest spot, typically a poorly insulated loft, and I'm guessing it the loft is boarded there wouldn't be 350mm or whatever of un-compressed insulation.

The subsequent problem in my parents house was that the flies then find warmer spots, notably incansescent light bulbs in the bedrooms below, and they crawled out of the poorly fitting ceiling roses and swarmed en masse on the window cills.

I let off a couple of pesticide "smoke bombs" in the attic after blocking up the very noticeable routes of entry, and vacuumed up the bodies.

No problems since then.