Which Type of Fly Is Infesting My Great Shelford Home or Business?

In a family home in Great Shelford, with school lunches, a food waste caddy, a compost bin and a houseplant on every sill, there are plenty of places flies can find something to breed in. Identifying the fly narrows the search a good deal.

Tiny Flies: Fruit Flies or Gnats

If the flies are very small and hover around the fruit bowl, the recycling or the bin, they are probably fruit flies. A glass with a dribble left in it, a damp cloth or a leaking bin bag is enough to keep a colony going. If they cluster at a houseplant and run across the soil instead, they are more likely fungus gnats, which breed in damp compost.

Medium Flies: House Flies

House flies are grey, quick and about the size of a grain of rice. They land on food and surfaces and come from waste. That could be your own bin, or it might be a neighbour's, a compost heap or a rubbish store nearby. Keeping bin lids closed and cleaning the inside of the bin itself helps more than most people expect.

Small, Dark, Furry Flies: Drain Flies

These rest on bathroom walls near the shower or bath. Larger houses often mean more bathrooms, and a spare or en-suite bathroom that sees little use is an ideal place for a film to build inside the pipe.

A Quick Comparison

• Hovering around fruit: fruit fly, look for spills and fermenting waste
• Around a plant pot: fungus gnat, check the compost
• Around the bin and food: house fly, check the waste and the lid
• On bathroom walls: drain fly, check the pipes and traps
• Large and noisy at a window: blow fly, check the loft or any void

Larger Houses, More Places to Check

Many homes in Great Shelford are larger family houses with more bathrooms, bigger kitchens, utility rooms and garages. That is more drains, more bins and more corners to check, and it explains why a fly problem can seem to come from nowhere. Go room by room rather than hunting only where you saw the fly.

A utility room with a washing machine waste, a garage with a spare fridge and a cellar or boot room with a floor gully are the places that most often get missed in a Great Shelford house.

When the Obvious Fixes Fail

If you have emptied the bin, washed the recycling and cleaned the drains and the flies are still arriving, the breeding site is out of sight. That might be a spill behind a built-in unit, a waste pipe you have not tested or something in the roof space.

Our fly control in Great Shelford is £180 fixed, with no call-out fee, and the price is agreed in advance. See the cost guide, or book a pest inspection and survey for £120 if you want the fly and its source identified first.

Call 01223 902388 or WhatsApp us a description and we can say what we think you have.