How Do You Know If You Have Carpet Beetles in Greenwich?

The Three Things You Will Notice

1. Small mottled beetles on a windowsill in spring or early summer. Adults head for the light, so this is usually the first sighting - and it is the least informative, because adults do no damage at all.
2. Small, clean, sharply defined holes in wool carpet, a jumper, a rug or a blanket. This is the damage, and it is diagnostic.
3. Short bristly grubs, or the pale empty skins they shed. The larvae, and the actual cause. Often the skins are found before the larvae are.

Any one of those is worth acting on. Two of them together is close to conclusive.

The Damage Is the Diagnostic

This is where carpet beetle separates cleanly from carpet moth, and you can do it yourself from a photograph.

Carpet beetle punches through. Small, round to irregular, clean-edged holes with the surrounding fibre intact. On a jumper it looks like somebody has been at it with a hole punch.

Carpet moth grazes. It thins an area down gradually, leaving a bare or worn patch with soft edges and no distinct holes, plus silken tubes in the pile.

The Larvae, and Why They Are Called Woolly Bears

Short, stout, brownish and covered in bristles, with visible bands across the body. They curl up when disturbed. Slow-moving, unlike almost everything else you might find in a carpet.

They shed their skins as they grow, and those shed skins are frequently easier to find than the larvae - pale, hollow, and holding the shape of the animal. Finding a scatter of them in a drawer or along a carpet edge is good evidence.

The bristles are the giveaway. Carpet moth larvae are smooth and pale; carpet beetle larvae are unmistakably hairy.

Where to Look on the Floor

1. The carpet edge along the skirting, particularly in rooms not in daily use.
2. Under and behind furniture that has not moved recently.
3. Beneath rugs, and on their underside.
4. Inside wardrobes and chests of drawers, on stored wool and natural fibres.
5. The airing cupboard.
6. Windowsills, for the adults - which points you at the room rather than the spot.

And Then Look Up

This is the part that distinguishes carpet beetle from every other fabric pest and the reason it recurs so often when treated as a floor problem.

The larvae feed on keratin, and one of the richest sources of it in a building is not the carpet - it is an old bird's nest in the eaves, a roof void or a disused chimney, full of feathers and debris. A nest like that can support a population for years while the visible damage appears in the rooms below.

Old wasp and bee nests left in a roof void do the same thing, and so does a stored wool blanket, a sheepskin, a feather pillow or a rolled-up rug that has been in the loft since somebody moved in.

So the single most useful thing you can tell us is whether you have loft access, and whether there has ever been a bird, wasp or bee nest in the roof.

What Else It Might Be

Do They Bite?

No. Carpet beetles and their larvae damage natural fibres; they do not bite or feed on people. Some people do react to contact with the larval hairs, which produces irritation that gets reported as bites - so if there is skin irritation alongside fabric damage, mention both.

When to Call

• Small clean holes appearing in wool carpet or clothing.
• Bristly larvae or their shed skins found anywhere.
• Repeated beetles on windowsills in spring, in the same room.
• Damage that has returned after a previous carpet treatment - that is a source problem and it is what this service is for.

If There Has Ever Been a Bird Nest in the Roof

This single fact changes the likelihood more than anything else you could tell us, so it is worth thinking about properly rather than answering off the top of your head.

• Have you ever heard birds in the roof or eaves? Particularly in spring, and particularly at the edge of the roof rather than in the middle.
• Is there a gap at the soffit, fascia or verge visible from the garden?
• Has anyone been into the loft in the last few years? If not, that is not reassurance - it is the reason nobody has seen it.
• Is there a capped or disused chimney? Old nests in flues are a classic reservoir and completely out of sight.
• Has a wasp or bee nest ever been treated in the roof? What is left behind feeds the same larvae.

A yes to any of those, combined with small clean holes appearing in wool downstairs, makes carpet beetle considerably more likely than carpet moth - and it tells us where the survey needs to go.