Breaking Through, Travelling On

Karmacat

{{{{{{{{ZTD}}}}}}}}}}}}}

:kisses3: **smooches**

Cheery_Daff

Good plan Z Most vexing to have pests in the house. Glad you're back! :j

ZTD

Cheery_Daff wrote: »

Good plan Z

It is so long as KC doesn't swallow her loft insulation down that pipe. Or end up with a dead rat stuck on the end of the implement with the motor going WOOOOOOO!

Both of which would be funny.

To everybody else...

Goldiegirl

Hi, good to see you back. at least it was your computer that was ill and not you!


Hope you get your blue bottles sorted out - the situation would really 'bug' me. (that was almost an unintentional pun)


I think I'd have to go up in the loft. the fear of the unknown would be greater than the fear of what I might find. Once you are up there, there's probably a harmless explanation

Hopefuljoy

Hello Karma and chums! I loathe flies and wage war on them in the summer. There is a hop bush next door and they seem to love it. Good luck Karma. I do think it's best to go up there on balance. If you can't face it pm me and maybe I can help?

Karmacat

**

ZTD wrote: »

... so long as KC doesn't swallow her loft insulation down that pipe. Or end up with a dead rat stuck on the end of the implement with the motor going WOOOOOOO!

Both of which would be funny.

To everybody else...

Ewwwww :eek: I'd give myself adrenaline poisoning from the freakout :rotfl: though to be honest, my hoover is so pathetic that when my sister came along to do my cleaning when I was really ill, she thought it wasn't working

Goldiegirl wrote: »

Hi, good to see you back. at least it was your computer that was ill and not you!


Hope you get your blue bottles sorted out - the situation would really 'bug' me. (that was almost an unintentional pun)


I think I'd have to go up in the loft. the fear of the unknown would be greater than the fear of what I might find. Once you are up there, there's probably a harmless explanation

You're probably right, you know ...

Hopefuljoy wrote: »

Hello Karma and chums! I loathe flies and wage war on them in the summer. There is a hop bush next door and they seem to love it. Good luck Karma. I do think it's best to go up there on balance. If you can't face it pm me and maybe I can help?

Hi there :wave: me too, the windows I open most of the time have fly screens on them! Erm, I know its not how we wanted to meet, but if you're prepared to do that, you qualify **instantly** for sainthood, you know?

Karmacat

I have a second online guru, y'know, a smallerholder in Eastern England, and he wants a photo of the flies, so I'll be wandering about tomorrow morning with my camera. I tried to do that with the bees last year, and I was rubbish, the builders took the photos in the end. Ah well.

Absolutely shattered now - I went to Sainsbo in the morning, and in the afternoon, for the first time since November, I did a little bit of tidying up in the back garden - everything looks really overgrown and untidy, but its recoverable - I just need to not let it get any worse.

Night night all

Fortune_Smiles

Karmacat wrote: »

Fortune - hi there! There's no linkie in your post that I can see. I'd like to read the article. But there's more than a few - 4 dozen this week! I work from home, I have clients in, I [STRIKE]can't have[/STRIKE] don't want clients traipsing over bluebottle bodies.

Z - how is it horrendous? Erm, I *really* don't like it

I went for a cuppa tea just now, and there was a bluebottle crawling out of the (closed) hatch. I'm not going up there today, and I'll see what happens tomorrow... I find it quite stressful, its just how I am, and I don't want to overstress again...

Ooops - sorry about that. Here it is:
http://www.ipm.iastate.edu/ipm/hortnews/1993/3-17-1993/attfly.html


Its common to have lots of these in the attic but they aren't nesting or reproducing up there. Just sitting out the winter. You could try some fly traps up there.


Fortune x

Karmacat

Hi Fortune! Thanks for the linkie, that *is* interesting, I've bookmarked it. Interesting about the warmed outside wall that they cluster on - I had the pointing renewed on that wall last year, my south-facing wall, and I presume thats probably made it more attractive to flies, being drier or something. To avoid this, I certainly wouldn't mind spraying up there to kill off the blighters before they get in

There's an underlying principle here that I don't understand, thats recalled by that article, actually. People talk about securing cracks - and there's a couple of entries into my house around badly sealed kitchen waste pipes etc, and I can take care of that.

But homeowners in the UK are specifically told to leave a gap between the eaves and the insulation thats laid on the attic floor, to give the roof space room to breathe? And doesn't that mean that there's a big gap there that *anything* can get into? I'm confused ...

ZTD

Karmacat wrote: »

But homeowners in the UK are specifically told to leave a gap between the eaves and the insulation thats laid on the attic floor, to give the roof space room to breathe? And doesn't that mean that there's a big gap there that *anything* can get into? I'm confused ...

Don't be - it's just the state of "advice" you get in this country. On one hand you have the Passiv Haus movement for air-tight homes. On the other hand you have the push for indoors drying: "drying clothes outdoors on a washing line or indoors on a rack costs nothing and uses no energy so it is the ideal way to dry your clothes." Both "movements":

1. Obviously don't communicate with each other
2. Think that damp is some kind of extinct fairy
3. Couldn't find their own backside - even working together

You *do* need ventilation - unless you want a bad damp problem. You *can* put a flyscreen in the holes to keep the air flowing, and the flies out. However, it will not keep rats and other larger wildlife out. You may be best off sealing all the little holes and putting that expanded metal into a few of the larger holes, backed by fly screen.

That hopefully should cover most eventualities.