Following a trail rather than wiping it
Every worker ant that walks the same route to food and back reinforces the scent trail for the next one, which is why a line seems to get busier the longer it is left. Cleaning it away only means the ants lay a fresh one; following it back tells you where the colony actually is.
Step one: find where they enter the room
Pick a warm, calm point in the day when activity peaks, and simply watch the trail rather than disturbing it as it leads away from the food source - the same pattern holds near Upminster, where larger detached and semi-detached houses on the borough's eastern edge. Common entry points include the threshold of a back door, a gap around pipework entering the kitchen, or the edge of a window frame - mark whichever one it is rather than wiping it down.
The larger gardens of Hornchurch, Elm Park and Collier Row
Bigger gardens are typical across these 1930s-50s semis and bungalows, and a patio built up against a rear extension gives a colony exactly the warm, dry conditions it favours. A nest doesn't have to be right by the house either - the joints between paving slabs or the base of a garden wall, well away from any building, can still send a trail all the way indoors.
Gidea Park's larger detached houses
The Gidea Park estate's larger detached houses sit on correspondingly larger, more established gardens, and a colony here can be settled under a path or a low retaining wall some way from the kitchen door - worth tracking properly rather than assuming the nearest bit of paving is the source.
What to leave alone for now
- Spraying the trail, which kills the foragers and leaves the colony intact
- Pouring boiling water into paving, which can damage mortar and rarely reaches the queen
- Filling the entry gap before the nest is dealt with, which sends the ants to a new gap
- Scattering powders along the trail, which can split a colony into several smaller ones
Closing the way in afterwards
Once the colony has been cleared, go back and seal just the gaps the ants were actually using, whether that's a threshold, a pipe hole or a crack in the mortar, just as near Romford, where the market-town centre. Don't seal weep holes or air bricks, doing so just locks damp inside the wall structure, whether that's near Collier Row, where suburban streets to the north of Romford, or elsewhere in the borough.
Booking ant control in Havering
Ant control in Havering runs £190 for a flat and £220 for a house; full details sit on the Havering ant control page. Book ant control and let us know where the trail comes into the room and roughly whereabouts outside you think the nest is.
