How Do You Know If You Have Spiders in Greenwich?

The Question Behind the Question

Almost nobody calls a pest controller uncertain about whether the thing in the bath is a spider. They call because they want to know whether it is normal, and whether anything should be done.

So this guide answers that instead. It is the only service page on this site where the honest advice, most of the time, is not to buy the service.

The Autumn Spike Is Not an Infestation

Every September the phone starts, and the explanation is nearly always the same. Mature male house spiders leave their webs in late summer and early autumn to look for females. That is why large spiders suddenly start crossing floors, appearing on walls and getting stuck in baths.

They are not moving in. They are moving through, they have been living in the building or the garden all year, and it lasts a matter of weeks.

British house spiders are not dangerous to people or pets, they do no damage to the building, and they eat a considerable number of the insects that would otherwise be in the room with you. There is nothing to treat.

What a Problem Actually Looks Like

There is a real version, and it has a shape. Not the number of spiders - the webbing, and how fast it returns.

The Test: How Fast Does It Come Back?

Clear the webbing thoroughly from the affected areas. Note the date. Look again in a week.

If it is largely still clear, you have an ordinary building with ordinary spiders and clearing webs occasionally is the whole answer. If it is substantially back within days, across multiple areas, that is a population being sustained by something - usually an insect supply - and treatment becomes a reasonable conversation.

That test costs nothing and it settles more enquiries than any amount of description over the phone.

The Insect Chain

Worth understanding because it explains everything about where spiders concentrate.

Spiders are where the food is, and the food is flying insects. Flying insects are where the light is. So the parts of a building that accumulate webbing are the parts near bright external lighting, near doors that stand open at night, and near anything that attracts insects.

Which means the most effective intervention available to most people has nothing to do with spiders at all: change what is lit outside, at night, near doors and windows. Reduce the insects and the spiders follow.

About the False Widow, in Both Directions

Worth being straightforward rather than either dismissing it or selling it.

The noble false widow is established across southern England and does turn up in London property. 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. And it is very frequently misidentified - a great many photographs sent to us as false widows turn out to be ordinary house spiders or cellar spiders.

If you think you have found one, send a clear photograph before booking anything. It costs nothing and it is the cheapest step in this whole process.

What to Tell Us

• How much webbing there is, and how quickly it returns after clearing.
• Which areas - a whole property, or a cellar, garage or outbuilding.
• Whether it is domestic or commercial.
• Whether there is bright external lighting near doors or windows.
• A photograph, if identification is the concern.

Describe it honestly and we will tell you honestly. If it is the autumn season or a single sighting, we would rather say so than take the booking.

If Somebody in the House Has a Phobia

This is the situation where we take a spider enquiry entirely seriously, and it is worth saying so plainly because people often apologise for it.

Arachnophobia is common, it is genuinely distressing, and where it stops somebody using a room in their own home the cost of treatment is not the relevant comparison. It is not a trivial reason and we do not treat it as one.

Two things worth knowing:

• The free measures matter more here, not less. Clearing webbing regularly and changing the outdoor lighting reduce sightings more reliably than treatment does, and sightings are what actually matter to somebody with a phobia.
• Say so when you book. It changes how the visit is handled - what gets discussed, what gets shown to you, and whether anybody needs to be out of the room. Nobody is going to hold a spider up for inspection.

What we will not do is pretend a treatment makes a building permanently spider-free, because it does not, and somebody making a decision on that basis deserves the truth rather than the sale.