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

The Moths Are Not the Problem

Adult carpet moths do not eat carpet. The larvae do, and the adults exist to produce more of them. So seeing a moth tells you larvae are somewhere nearby and tells you nothing at all about where.

It also means the reverse holds. Plenty of established carpet moth problems are found with no adults ever having been noticed, because the larvae work out of sight for months before anything emerges.

The Damage Pattern Is the Diagnostic

Carpet moth larvae avoid light and disturbance, and that single behaviour produces a damage pattern so consistent it is close to a signature.

• Under the sofa, and under anything else that has not moved in a year.
• Along the skirting line, in a band a few centimetres wide.
• Beneath a rug that has sat in the same place.
• Behind a door that always stands open, in the strip nobody steps on.
• Inside a wardrobe or under a fitted cupboard.
• The room nobody uses. The spare bedroom, the box room, the room that became storage.

The corollary is what makes this diagnostic: a busy hallway or a living room floor that gets walked on daily can look perfect while the room next door is being eaten along its edges. Damage in the middle of a well-used floor is usually something else.

The Wool Test, Which Costs Nothing

Carpet moth larvae feed on keratin, the protein in animal fibre. That means wool, silk, felt, sheepskin, feather-filled items and wool underlay. It does not mean nylon, polypropylene or polyester.

So if a wool rug is going bare while the man-made carpet beside it is untouched, that is a confirmation you can make yourself in ten seconds.

The trap: a wool underlay beneath a synthetic carpet can be attacked while the carpet above it looks perfect. If the carpet is synthetic and something is still going wrong, lift a corner.

A Ten-Minute Check

1. Lift the rugs. Look at the underside and at the floor beneath. This is where the evidence usually is.
2. Pull the sofa out and look along the skirting behind it, then do the same behind any large piece of furniture that has not moved recently.
3. Check behind doors that always stand open, and the strip of carpet underneath them.
4. Go into the rooms nobody uses and check the edges.
5. Look for the tubes, not just the bare patches. Small silken cases the same colour as the pile - see below.
6. Open the wardrobes, in case there is clothes moth alongside.

What You Are Looking For, Beyond the Bare Patches

• Small silken tubes or cases in the pile. The larvae build them from carpet fibre and debris, which is why they are the same colour as the carpet and why people look straight past them.
• Fine gritty debris at the carpet edge. Frass and shed cases, routinely mistaken for ordinary dust.
• Thinning rather than holes. Carpet moth grazes an area down; it does not punch through. Sharply defined holes point at carpet beetle instead.
• Small moths low down near skirtings. Weak fliers that tend to run or flutter rather than fly properly across a room.

What Else It Might Be

Period Floors Make It Harder to Spot

A great deal of the older housing across Greenwich, Blackheath and Plumstead has original boards under the carpet. Gaps between boards give larvae shelter no vacuum will ever reach, so a room can look immaculate and still be supporting a population underneath.

If the carpet looks fine but you keep seeing small moths low down, lifting a corner near the skirting is worth doing before you conclude there is nothing there.

What to Send With Your Enquiry

• Photographs of the damage, and of anything you find beneath a rug.
• Which rooms show it - and be honest about the ones nobody uses.
• Whether the carpet, the underlay or the rugs are wool.
• Whether stored clothing is affected as well, which may mean clothes moth alongside.

If You Have Just Moved In, or Just Bought a Rug

Two situations where a carpet moth problem arrives fully formed and catches people out.

A new property

Damage found within weeks of moving in is almost always pre-existing - the previous occupants' furniture was covering it, and it becomes visible the moment the room is emptied. That is actually good news: it means the extent is knowable now, before your own furniture goes back on top of it.

Check the edges of every room before you unpack, particularly under where the previous furniture stood. Ten minutes then is worth a great deal later.

A second-hand or antique rug

Wool rugs are one of the commonest ways carpet moth is introduced to a property that did not have it. Before a rug comes into the house, turn it over, look at the underside and the fringe, and check for silken tubes in the pile and fine debris in the backing.

If it has been rolled and stored for a long period, that is exactly the undisturbed condition larvae need.