Hi
I keep finding dead woodlice around the edges my living room carpet, as well as the occasional one scurrying across the carpet. For the life of me I can=92t find where they are coming from, so I can stop them. There are no obvious signs of damp which I believe they like. Is there anything available to track their entry point?
Thanks
Alec
You might try a fine coating of dust over a couple of square feet. How fine it would have to be, I don't know, as I've no idea what kind of foot pressure/dragging woodlice have. Failing that, just nuke'em with insect killer.
Someone is going to say it.... does insecticide work on crustaceans?
They live off damp rotting wood (but they don't make wood rot). I would be checking for any damp rotting woodwork inside the house.
And they are also known as grammerzows, cheeselogs, coffin cutters, monkey peas and my favourite, chiggy pigs
How do you find out which couple of their feet are square?
G.Harman
Also "pill bugs" and "roly-polies" (not sure about the spelling).
They're supposed to be good to eat too, being the ony terrestrial member of the shrimp family, although I haven't tried them.
I know that, so I was most surpised to find loads of them under a concrete hearth that I lifted out of my mates old house last week. This had concrete floors as well.
Look at their boots, silly.
Slaters
I ate one once ('at age 3).
I wouldn't dream of insulting a woodlouse by calling it anything other than a "slater".
it's a regional thing...
Gordon
I don't know where or why they're getting in, but I have to vac out the close lights every few months (which are wired in singles in conduit) as the luminaires become woodlouse/slater cemetaries.
Owain
I was removing some loose rendering about 12 feet up the house wall a few months back and found a family of them underneath (between brick and render).
Even right on the Sussex coast the seashore one is a sea slater.
Andy
We had a slow leak that took us ages to find. The seam on the hot-water tank had gone, but the water was running along under a floorboard and dripping off many feet away, in a spot that couldn't be seen due to it being in a 4" gap between the wall and a joist, under an immovable cupboard. For months we had damp, but no sign of a leak. The damp lifted the wallpaper in a downstairs room and we found woodlice living behind the raised paper - presumably eating either the back of the paper or the paste as all the wood was fine.
SteveW
replying to alec green, Rosie Flora wrote: How did you get rid of them? I have the same problem I have no dampness but I keep finding dead woodlice in corners of my lounge which is carpeted
I replaced my skirting board and fitted UPCV doors.
Woodlice were coming in through the front and rear doors. Spray from garden shops had a slight effect and if I was present in the house all year might have got them all, but when I pulled off a piece of skirting the reason for the "invasion" became clear. The little horrors had chewed paths into the rear of the stuff, the skirting then became a veritable conduit for a safe quick passage around the house.
Replacing the skirting in the front and rear where the original wooden doors were has virtually stopped the infestation.
I am slowly replacing all the skirting in the house with MDF, and still find the odd one or two live woodlice, but the problem has to all intents and purposes disappeared.
The problem solved itself with the UPVC really and oddly enough after replacing the door and the skirting in the porch, on my return back home after a few months away, I used to find little groups of dead woodlice on the floor near the inside of the front door. This was after the first year. No sign of that now.
AB
They are eating your decaying floor boards or decaying skirting boards? They are dead possibly because at some time the timbers have been treated with a long lasting insecticide for woodworm.
After 7 years I expect they will be dead by now.
Did you notice the date of the posting ?.
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