Why Spiders Collect in the Buildings Behind the High Street
Spiders settle where there is prey and where nothing disturbs them, and both are easy to find at the back of an older commercial building. A store room opened once a day, a lock-up used at weekends and a yard with a light over the door all produce flying insects in the evening and then leave the webs standing. Railway land and the industrial units towards Willesden Junction add rough ground and rank vegetation close by, which carries far more insect life than a mown garden. What attracts spiders into a property sets out why the food supply decides nearly everything.
Lock-ups, sheds and the yard
In a lock-up or a shed, the places to look are along the roof timbers, behind stacked boxes and inside anything that has not been moved for a year. A gap under an up-and-over door or around a frame that no longer closes squarely lets insects and spiders walk straight in. These are outbuildings rather than living space, so they will never be free of spiders; taking webs and egg sacs down every few weeks is what stops the numbers climbing.
False widows in a store room
The noble false widow is glossy and dark brown with a rounded body and pale markings, and it favours precisely this sort of place: the corner of a store room window, the underside of a shelf, the back of an outside light. Bites are uncommon and most are described as being like a bee or wasp sting. Speak to a pharmacist or GP if a bite swells badly or looks infected, and call 999 for signs of a severe allergic reaction. Whether any spider in Brent is genuinely dangerous goes into it further.
Autumn House Spiders in the Terraces
In the terraced streets, and in the flats converted out of them, the spider people actually notice is the big house spider, mostly in September and October when the males leave their webs to find a female. They show up in the bath, on the landing and behind a sofa, having spent months out of sight in a cellar, a sub-floor void or the back of a cupboard. A handful over an autumn is ordinary. Webs, shed skins and egg sacs returning to one room week after week is the pattern worth acting on, and why spiders keep appearing in the same rooms looks at that.
What Spider Treatment Does, and What It Does Not
Treatment is aimed at rooms inside a home where spiders keep building up, and it can bring those numbers down. It will not stop spiders arriving from a yard, an alley behind the terrace or a railway embankment, and it changes nothing about the insect supply that brought them. Where the real reason for a lot of spiders is another insect indoors, such as carpet beetle larvae in a cupboard or carpet moths in a stored rug, that has to be sorted out as well. Can pest control reduce spider problems? and whether lots of spiders mean another pest problem are honest about the limits.
One thing to settle before booking: a store room belonging to the shop, or a unit you run as a business, is quoted per site rather than counted as a room at a domestic price. A storeroom inside your own flat is counted like any other room. Premises around Park Royal are all handled that way.
Before the visit
- List the rooms where webs come back, and say which are inside the home and which are outbuildings
- Pull boxes and stored goods away from the walls so the corners can actually be reached
- Say whether a garage or store opens directly into the living space
- Photograph anything you think is a false widow, from a safe distance
Spiders from outside will still wander in afterwards, particularly in autumn. If the treated rooms fill with webs again, get back in touch and say which ones.
Fewer Webs in a Harlesden Home or Store Room
Light, gaps and clutter are the three things worth changing. How to stop spiders coming back goes further, where spiders hide inside homes says where to look first, and Spider Control Brent covers homes across the borough.
- Brush webs and egg sacs off window corners, shelf edges and roof timbers every few weeks
- Fit a brush strip or seal under a garage or store room door, and pack out a frame that no longer shuts
- Switch the yard light off when it is not needed, or fit a warmer-coloured bulb where it is yours to change
- Keep stored things in lidded crates rather than open cardboard, and off the floor where you can
- Cut back ivy and shrubs that touch a back wall or a window frame
