Sudden flies in house, help I can't cope!!

[Cherryblossom99]

Posting here for traffic,
Since yesterday evening flies have been appearing my living room, I've killed about 10 so far. There's nothing rotting, no smells, no bad food etc. I can't figure out where they are coming from.
I have a phobia of flies/maggots and I'm sitting here constantly on edge. Anyone have any ideas?
Thanks

My parents had a dead rat under the floorboards a few years back. There was only a slight smell but they had loads of flies?

Are they tiny little ones? If so put a bottle of vinegar or fabric softener on the side and they will climb in.

Maybe in the soil in your houseplants if you have any 🤷🏻‍♀️

They are quite big, not quite bluebottles but I don't know.

Definitely something dead. Took about a week for the flies to clear for us. No smell at all. About a year later a builder found the carcass under the kitchen.

Do you have a fireplace? We had a bird fall down and went down the back of the electric fire which had been fitted in there. Chimney hadn't been capped.
First we knew was when lots of flies appeared.

Any chance a bird has come down the chimney and died?

Cluster flies? Have you warmed the room up? Do you live rurally?

The same thing happened to us, it was so horrible.

Pictures of the flies please. This is my field so need an ID for accurate advice.

Vinegar will only work for fruit flies. House flies, lesser house flies, autumn flies, fungas gnats, drain flies etc will need their own distinct methods.

I'd err on autumn/cluster flies but wouldn't want to speculate

Had a houseplant with soil just a small one which I hadn't thought of, got rid of it there and will see if that helps. I've also poured bleach and boiling water down the drains. I have an electric fire thing. I'll post a pic if anymore appear. My first instinct is to kill them as I'm so scared of them lol 😳

If they are large like bluebottles but black and kinda sluggish and not buzzy, then something has definitely died somewhere. We had hundreds of them over a few days.
The culprit was a dead (decomposed) mouse under the kitchen cupboard which the cat must have brought in.

They were so slow, so we just followed them around with the hoover.

Sounds as though the could be cluster flies. They like to try and hibernate in window frames when the weather gets cold. We get this every year since moving rurally, and the only solution we've found is opening the windows and sweeping out the frames every week, and then spraying with bleach. They don't seem to come back as quickly. The first year we moved here, I went to open one of the windows after having them shut all morning, and it was like I'd unleashed an apocalypse. Literally hundreds of the buggers flew out and t was like a huge black cloud!

Cluster flies. Nothing has died. (Might be the cause in summer but not winter). We have some that come out of the loft.

They're just seeking out a warm place to stay, they aren't attracted to anything "rotting" so don't worry about that, and they don't lay eggs on human food, so not a hygiene risk, just grim to have them in their hundreds buzzing around!

I reckon it's cluster flies too. Nothing is rotting. They're just looking for warm places.

we had this & it was a dead mouse. Are the flies still as opposed to buzzing around?

And is. Came back home one afternoon and one of our bedrooms was full of flies.
We realised it was probably from a dead bird down the chimney. Years later we took the old brass vent off (which had been been closed shut) for some plastering work and the pigeon skeleton was just the other side of the vent.

And us , that should read.

Another vote for checking your fireplace: we had a living room full of flies thanks to a dead blackbird that came down the chimney. Flies were escaping through the vents in the wood burner’s doors.

Cluster flies, there’s loads this year probably due to the warm weather good for egg laying.

I've had this recently in my house too. They were similar to what someone upthread posted. Usually quite big and sluggish. Very easy to kill.

I have no idea how they were getting in, but I mainly found them on the 1st floor (out of 3) where the bedrooms and one of the bathrooms is, but also a few in the kitchen on the ground floor. I wondered if they were getting in through the bathroom vents somehow. My husband took the grill off the hood fan above the hob and about 15 dead ones fell out 🤢

Every once in a while I could hear a live one flying around in there. I think they would find their way in through the kitchen vent and we're attracted to the cooking smell. But they couldn't get out once they were in there so that doesn't explain how the others got into the main house. Only thing I could think of was the bathroom vents / fans. We don't open our windows much

We had this and problem was a dead mouse 😩

I think I saw that film.

We’ve got the same thing atm. Large black flies. I’ve hoovered up about 50 and still seeing the odd one. They’ve mostly been at the window in our utility room. Bloody horrible buggers.