Why the Storage Ends Up Holding the Spiders
Spiders settle where there is food and where nothing disturbs them. A room that is opened twice a year offers the second in abundance, and the first arrives on its own: flies coming in at the roof edge, insects drawn to a window left on the latch, and whatever is already living in stored paper and fabric. Webs in those rooms are rarely swept away, so each generation builds on the last and the numbers climb quietly. What attracts spiders into a property explains the pull, and the open ground towards Preston Park and Barn Hill means there is no shortage of insect life drifting in from outside.
The loft and the space behind the eaves
A Preston loft is reached by a hatch on the landing and, once you are up there, it runs away into the dark under the slope of the roof on either side. Webs gather along the purlins, over the water tank if there is still one up there, and across the boxes nearest the hatch. If a loft conversion has been done, the eaves cupboards behind the side walls do the same job in a smaller space. Anyone bringing the Christmas boxes down in December gets a fair idea of how the year has gone. Why spiders gather in lofts goes into what keeps them there.
The box room and what is stacked in it
Most of these houses have a small third bedroom over the hall, and in a good many it has become the place where suitcases, sports kit, old bedding and a wall of cardboard boxes live. The metre of undisturbed space behind a stack of boxes is as good a habitat as a shed. Cardboard is worth a second look for another reason: stored woollens and old carpet offcuts in the same room can be feeding carpet beetle larvae or carpet moths, and that insect supply is part of why the spiders stay.
The Garage Off the Drive and the Shed
A garage that holds bicycles, tools and garden chairs rather than a car stays cool all summer and never really dries out in winter. Webs hang from the roof timbers and behind whatever is stacked against the walls, and where the garage has an internal door into the hall or kitchen, what lives in one ends up in the other. The shed at the bottom of the garden, up against a mature hedge full of insects, works the same way on a smaller scale. Where spiders hide inside homes lists the places worth checking first.
False Widows Around the Porch and Window Frames
The noble false widow is well established across London and turns up round window frames, under sills, in porches and in sheds and garages — dark, glossy, with a rounded body and a cream marking on top. Bites are uncommon and are generally likened to a wasp sting. If a bite swells badly or looks infected, speak to a pharmacist or GP, and call 999 if there are signs of a severe allergic reaction. Are there dangerous spiders in Brent homes? sets out what is actually known about them.
Big Spiders Crossing the Carpet in Early Autumn
As summer ends, the males of the large house spiders leave their webs in garages, sheds and wall voids and set off to find a female. That is why one appears in the bath, or makes a dash across the living room carpet while the television is on. In a house with a garden and outbuildings, a few of those each year is ordinary and is not a reason to book anything. A build-up looks quite different: webs and egg sacs returning to the same corners of the same rooms week after week, which is the question why spiders keep appearing in the same rooms takes on. The Pest Control Preston page puts the autumn wandering in context with everything else that moves indoors around then.
Being Straight About What a Treatment Changes
A room treatment is aimed at the places where spiders have built up, and it can bring those numbers down. It will not stop spiders walking in from a garden backing onto open ground, and it does nothing about the insects that drew them in, so the honest order of work is to treat the rooms, keep the webs cleared afterwards, and deal with any other insect problem the house has. Where a room is thick with webs because something else is breeding in it, that is the thing to sort out — whether lots of spiders mean another pest problem and what pest control can do about spiders both look at this.
Before you book
- List the rooms and outbuildings where the webs keep returning — loft, box room, garage, shed
- Pull boxes and stored things away from the walls and corners of those rooms so they can be reached
- Say whether the garage has an internal door into the house, and whether the loft is boarded
- Mention where you have found false widows, if anywhere, and roughly how many
- Clear the webs and egg sacs you can reach first, so it is obvious afterwards what is new
Fewer Webs in a House That Stores Things
What follows is mostly about the storage rather than the spiders. How to stop spiders coming back has more, and Spider Control Brent covers homes across the borough; neighbouring Queensbury has the same garages and back gardens.
- Move stored things out of open cardboard and into lidded plastic crates, and stand them clear of the walls
- Run a brush or a vacuum along the loft purlins, the garage rafters and the shed corners two or three times a year
- Fit a draught strip to the bottom of the door between the garage and the house
- Leave outside lights off at the porch and back door when they are not needed, or fit warmer-toned bulbs that draw fewer insects
- Cut back shrubs and climbers touching the window frames and the garage wall, and fill the gaps round the frames themselves
