How Much Does Carpet Moth Treatment Cost in Greenwich?

The Published Price

The Rooms That Count Are Not the Rooms You Use

This is the single most useful thing to understand before booking, because it is where people either over-order or under-order.

Carpet moth larvae avoid light and disturbance. They feed where nothing happens: under the sofa, along a skirting run, beneath a rug that has not moved in years, behind a door that always stands open, and in the bedroom nobody sleeps in. A busy hallway can look perfect while the spare room next door is being eaten along its edges.

So the honest room count is often the opposite of the intuitive one. The living room where the family spends every evening may need nothing. The room that has been used for storage since you moved in may be the whole problem.

What They Eat, and What That Rules Out

Carpet moth larvae feed on keratin, the protein in animal fibre. In practice that means wool, and it also means silk, felt, sheepskin, feather-filled items and wool underlay.

A pure synthetic carpet is not food. This matters commercially as well as biologically: if a wool rug is being damaged while the nylon carpet beside it is untouched, that is a confirmation you can make yourself before spending anything. It also produces the trap that catches people out most often - a wool underlay beneath a synthetic carpet can be attacked while the carpet above it looks perfect.

Treatment Against Replacement

People often arrive having already priced a new carpet, so it is worth being straight about how the two decisions relate.

Replacing a damaged carpet without treating the room is the expensive mistake. The population is at the edges, in the gaps between floorboards and under the furniture, not in the middle of the carpet you are throwing away. A new carpet laid into an untreated room gives the survivors something new to work on.

Treating without replacing is entirely reasonable where the damage is cosmetic or confined. Treating and then replacing, in that order, is the right sequence where the damage is bad enough that the carpet is going anyway. What does not work is replacement alone.

Original Floorboards Make It Harder

A great deal of the older housing across Greenwich, Blackheath and Plumstead has original boards under the carpet, and the gaps between them give larvae somewhere to shelter that a vacuum cleaner will never reach. A room can look immaculate and still be supporting a population underneath.

It does not change the price, but it does change the aftercare: the treated perimeter has to be left alone for the period we specify on the day, and regular vacuuming of the edges afterwards is the single most effective ongoing measure there is.

Carpet Moth or Clothes Moth?

They are close relatives with the same appetite, and the answer changes where we treat rather than whether we treat - so it does not usually change the price, but it can change the room count.

• Damage on the floor, at edges and under furniture points at carpet moth.
• Damage inside a wardrobe, on stored knitwear or a folded wool coat points at clothes moth.
• Plenty of properties have both, which is worth checking before the visit so the wardrobes are included in the assessment rather than found afterwards.

Preparation That Keeps the Count Down

1. Vacuum thoroughly before the visit, concentrating on edges, under furniture and beneath rugs, then empty the vacuum into an outside bin.
2. Move furniture where you can so the perimeter can actually be reached.
3. Bag up badly damaged wool items rather than moving them to another room - carrying an infested rug into the spare bedroom is how a one-room job becomes a two-room one.
4. Check the wardrobes and the airing cupboard before we arrive, not after.

Offices, Hotels and Commercial Premises

Wool carpet in low-traffic areas is where this shows up commercially: meeting rooms, corridors, under fixed seating and behind a row of desks. Areas are assessed and priced the same way as rooms in a house. The part worth planning for is that treated areas need to be left alone for a period afterwards, so tell us the operational constraint at the enquiry rather than on the day.

The Same Price Across All Seven Areas

Greenwich, Blackheath, Woolwich, Eltham, Charlton, Plumstead and Abbey Wood, all at the published figures, with no travel loading.

A Ten-Minute Check to Do Before You Book Anything

This costs nothing, and it will tell you whether you need us and roughly how many rooms are involved - which is the number the price depends on.

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 in a year.
3. Check behind doors that always stand open, and the strip of carpet under them.
4. Check the rooms nobody uses. The spare bedroom, the box room, the room that has become storage. These are frequently worse than the living room.
5. Look for the tubes, not just the bare patches. Small silken cases the same colour as the pile are the confirmation.
6. Open the wardrobes. If stored knitwear is damaged as well, mention it - it may be clothes moth alongside, and it changes what gets assessed.

Take a photograph of anything you find. It costs nothing to send with the enquiry and it occasionally saves a visit.