How to keep flies out of the house
We’ve got 7 chemical-free tips from an expert to keep flies and other insects out of your home.
Image credit: Shutterstock/Andrei Armiagov
We’ve got 7 chemical-free tips from an expert to keep flies and other insects out of your home.
It’s one of nature’s little jokes: just as our thoughts turn to shorts and barbecues, winged nemeses show up to spoil the fun. Suddenly, figuring out how to keep flies out of the house becomes our all-consuming obsession.
With a head start of nearly 240 million years on us humans, what flies lack in brains, they make up for in tenacity. It’s worth remembering that when feeling frustratingly outwitted by a fly.
Ideally, we’d want flies to leave our home of their own volition. No one wants to harm a living creature – at the end of the day, even flies have a meaningful role to play in the circle of life.
Sadly though, their buzzing isn’t the worst of it. Flies also have a nasty habit of transmitting diseases, so we want any flies out of our homes and away from our meals, fast.
If your sole strategy for getting them gone involves chasing each of them from room to room and loudly pleading for them to leave, then we’ve got you covered.
We asked pest controllers for their advice and it turns out they're very simple creatures. (Flies, not pest controllers.)
According to Stephen Wales from Bespoke Pest Control, which is based in Hertfordshire, flies don’t just decide to come and bother you because it takes their fancy.
“It’s not random. Flies turn up for three main reasons: food, warmth and somewhere to breed," he says. “If your house offers any of those, they’ll take the invite, set up home and annoy you.”
Wales' top tip to keep flies out might work in winter, but it’s often not possible in hot weather. “The only way to keep them out of the house is by shutting your windows and doors or fitting fly screens," he says.
A quick way to stop flies but still let some air in is to use a beaded curtain (one of the best ideas we’ve heard is to hang up a glittery one because the shiny surface puts winged visitors off). But with hotter summers, it might be worth investing in fly screens.
Laurence Barnard from BASF has been in the business of keeping pests out for years and is always working on new solutions. “Anecdotally, I feel like fly activities have increased year on year and we’ll want to leave our doors open in hot weather so it’s worth investing in fly screens, which are made of mesh and fit to your door and window frames," he says.
If you’ve ever hung a clear bag of water outside your door to repel flies, these traps take the idea further. Fly bags catch the pesky creatures before they get a chance to get in the door. Make sure you hang them on the outside though.
“Fly bags are really stinky, but very effective if you use them right,” says Barnard. “Let’s say flies are coming in from the garden, you can build up a perimeter barrier to catch them before they reach the house.”
What about our trusty bag of clear water? “Flies don’t really think independently, so they’re not going to go, ‘Oh, there’s a bag of water,’” says Barnard.
Flies are attracted by smells, so not leaving food out might sound like an obvious solution. But how many of us can honestly say we’ve got rid of every single crumb?
“Bins, pet food, crumbs, even that ‘I’ll rinse it later’ plate in the sink will all encourage flies,” says Wales. So a clean sweep is essential. If your pets don’t eat their food in one go, make sure it’s covered or removed.
And if you’re squeamish, you might want to look away now, but flies prefer a breeding spot with a rich food source. “Drains, compost or – less pleasantly – something dead like a rodent in a void are ideal places to breed,” says Wales.
Some people swear by the scented sticks or candles, but do flies love them or hate them? “They’re good on lots of flying insects, for example mosquitoes, midges and gnats, but not particularly on a house fly,” says Barnard.
“Like a lot of natural solutions, they might do something, but the main thing with flies is it’s always finding the source and getting that under control.”
Beer, red wine... we've tried them all when it comes to traps, but according to the experts there's one clear winner. "If you’ve got a problem with fruit flies, rather than house flies, a vinegar-based trap works well,” says Barnard. “But, like with house flies, the problem is more to do with hygiene.
"Fruit flies breed quickly, so remove any spills or out-of-date fruit. A lot of the fruit fly traps have a vinegary base that lures the flies. It might trap the odd house fly, but it’s not a complete solution.”
You might notice that smels aren't the only thing coming from your drain in hot weather. “There are lots of drain-based flies that feed on the fats and bits of food down there,” says Barnard. “Rinsing your drain out with hot water alone isn’t going to wash it out properly, so the best thing to do is to use an unblocker where you have a build-up of fats."
And move anything else murky that could lure flies in. "Keep your bins, compost bins and all that stuff away from any entrances to your house," he advises.
Taking on easy DIY projects is a great way to pass a weekend.
