Professional Spider Control in Greenwich

When Spider Control Is Not the Answer

Autumn brings a spike in spider enquiries every year, and almost all of them have the same explanation: mature male house spiders leave their webs in late summer and early autumn to look for females, which is why large spiders suddenly start crossing floors and getting stuck in baths. It lasts a matter of weeks, it happens in every house in the country, and it is not an infestation.

British house spiders are not dangerous, they do not damage the building, and they eat a considerable number of the insects that would otherwise be in the room with you. We are not going to sell a chemical treatment for that. If that is what you have, glass and a piece of card is the correct treatment, and reducing outdoor lighting near doors and windows will do more than anything we could apply.

When Spider Control Is Reasonable

• Persistent, heavy webbing throughout a property that returns quickly after being cleared - typically in a large or partly unused building.
• Commercial premises where webbing is a presentation or hygiene issue. Warehousing, storage, food premises, hospitality frontage and similar.
• Basements, cellars, garages and outbuildings where the conditions support a much larger population than a normal room would.
• A genuine and persistent phobia where a treated, sealed and web-free property makes a real difference to somebody's ability to use their own home. That is a legitimate reason and we do not treat it as a trivial one.
• Noble false widow concern where the identification has been confirmed and there is a persistent population in a living area.

About the False Widow

Steatoda nobilis, the noble false widow, is established across southern England and turns up regularly in London property. It is worth being straightforward about it in both directions. It is the British spider most likely to give a bite worth mentioning, and bites do happen - usually when one is trapped against skin in clothing or bedding. It is also nothing like the animal the headlines describe: bites are uncommon, and most reported ones amount to a local reaction comparable to a wasp sting.

It is also very frequently misidentified. A great many photographs sent to us as false widows are ordinary house spiders or cellar spiders. If you think you have found one, a clear photograph is genuinely useful before anyone books anything.

How Spider Treatment Works

Where treatment is warranted, the work is mostly about webbing and harbourage rather than about chasing individual spiders. Existing webs and egg sacs are removed, because leaving them means the population re-establishes from where it already is, and a residual treatment is applied to the harbourage points and the runs between them - frame edges, ceiling junctions, roof voids, cellars, window reveals and the external entry points.

The honest limitation, and it is worth stating: no treatment makes a building permanently spider-free. Spiders come in from outside through the same gaps everything else uses. Reducing the insects they are feeding on, closing entry points and keeping webbing cleared will do more for the long-term result than repeating a treatment will.

What helps between visits

• Clear webbing regularly, particularly around window frames, ceiling corners and external door surrounds.
• Reduce bright outdoor lighting near doors and windows. It attracts the flying insects, and the insects are what attract the spiders.
• Close gaps around doors, air bricks and window frames - the same proofing that keeps other pests out.
• Keep storage off the floor in garages, cellars and outbuildings.

Spiders in Commercial and Storage Premises

Most of the spider work that genuinely needs doing is commercial. Warehousing, storage, workshop space, hospitality frontage and food premises all have standards to meet, and heavy webbing across a stock area or a shopfront is a real operational problem rather than a matter of taste. In those settings a planned programme of web removal and treatment makes sense in a way it usually does not in a three-bedroom house.