How Can You Tell Where Ants Are Coming From in Cambourne?

To tell where ants are coming from, follow the trail to the point where it crosses the wall or floor, then look outside at the same spot. In a Cambourne house built from the late 1990s onwards, that point is more often a pipe, a threshold or a paving edge than a crumbling wall.

Different Houses, Different Gaps

A newer estate house is generally tight, but it is not sealed. Builders leave small gaps where services pass through, and over time the sealant around them shrinks. Ants can use a gap far narrower than most people expect.

• Where the waste pipe from the kitchen sink goes through the outer wall
• Around the gas, water and electric entries, often under the kitchen or in a utility room
• The edge of a patio door track and its threshold
• The expansion gap between a conservatory base and the house wall
• Cracks along the join between a garage floor and its wall

The Block Paving Question

Many Cambourne gardens have block-paved drives and patios, laid on sand. Black garden ants like to nest in the sand beneath paving and in the gaps between blocks, because it is warm and well drained. If your trail leads out of the back door and across the patio, look closely at the joints. Piles of fine sand beside the blocks can mean ants have been working beneath them.

A Simple Way to Map It

1. Sketch the room and mark where you see ants most often.
2. Note the time of day each sighting happens.
3. Follow the line to the wall, the door or the cupboard back.
4. Go outside and check the same patch from the garden or driveway side.

Take a photograph at each stage. It is far easier to show someone a line of ants going into a pipe gap than to describe it.

What Will Not Help

Spraying the visible ants kills the workers on show and leaves the colony untouched. Sealing the gap before you know where the colony is can push the traffic to a second gap nearby. Seal after treatment, not before.

A professional ant treatment works because workers carry it back to the nest. That depends on the trail being left alone, which is why we ask you to hold off wiping it.

A Word on Lakes and Landscaping

Cambourne is planted with a lot of shrubbery and grass verges, and the beds that run right up to house walls are an easy base for a colony. If your trail ends at a patio door, check whether a bed or planter sits just outside it. A Cambourne garden with bark mulch against the brickwork gives ants shelter right where the wall begins.

Ant control in Cambourne is £240 fixed, covered in detail in our cost guide. If you want to understand what you are dealing with first, a pest inspection and survey is £120.

Ring 01223 902388 or WhatsApp us with your photos if you would rather not work it out alone.