flies. how to get rid of them?

[ladysybil]

I am the first to admit that my house doesnt look as clean and tidy as it could. i just cant keep it looking like a catalogue. but, i do draw the line at creepy crawlies, and recently my kitchen is overrun with flies. i empty the bin as often as possible and dont keep cut fruit or food out uncovered. yet there seem to be a lot of flies in there. Ive left the window and backdoor open in the mistaken assumption that they will fly out, but instead, they seem to be flying in.

what can i do?

We've got these window stickers that are supposed to kill them - it seems to attract a few but our greatest success has been with an electric zapper thing from the pound shop that the children seem to enjoy using

Yes, I have the same problem in the country. I have the flower stickers on the windows - which do work. You can have either one with a chemical which kills them sot he ones which are very sticky so once the fly lands they cant get off.

I have have a zapper which is commercial quality but the wiser flies dont seem to get close.

You can get fly traps for outside, the chemicl in the trap attracts the females and they die in the bag - I think these are used alot in hot countries.

Vacuum cleaners are great I have such fun sucking them up better than chemical sprays!

But there is no way of stopping them. Soon as there is any heat they are in my house in a flash.

I suppose you could buy fly screens of some kind?

Have you had a look about to see if there's something gone off in a carrier bag? They could be laying eggs somewhere. The vacuum cleaner works.

My house gets over-run with flies, and I am almost phobic.

I use fly papers, Raid, and the traditional screech-and-flail-with-a-magazine

I counted how many I was killing with the swat the other day and stopped at about eighty.

it is grim and depressing

I live in the middle of nowhere, too many cows.

Someone told me that planting a Russian vine will deter them, don't know if it works though.

We seem to be overrun with flies every summer, it becomes and obsession for me to get rid of them, and I become really stressed out and paranoid about where they could be coming from.

I think ours come from outside, as it's always worse when we have the doors open, our neighbour has a compost heap and I think that's the main source of our problem.

We bought one of those zapper lights, very much like this one
It's brilliant, and the only time we have flies now is if the patio door is open. Then I get handy with a fly swatter. The only problem we've had with the light is now every time it zaps something I cheer and have to go and inspect what's in there, and of course, it's indiscriminate, so we often get moths in there, which I don't like, as I don't mind moths at all.

Hope you manage to find a solution, they really are awful creatures

Just came back from a friend's house which she scents with lemon grass essential oil as she said it keeps flies away. Smelled lovely and there were no flies anywhere.

I want one of those electric fly swats. My dad has one; kept ds1 amused for hours swatting every living creature in the house (he then moved into the garden to find more victims).

My friend had one of those commercial zapper lights; very effective, but made a sizzling nose every time a fly hit it, which was quite gross.

Also high on the gross list are flypapers - my gran used them, and I once got my hair stuck in one when I walked into it - eww!

I thought I was slatternly due to the tremendous amount of small flies in the house. Turns out the whole village had the issue as a local farmer who has an onion processing plant was dumping onion peel in a field and flies were everywhere. I have a zapper like a tennis racket which is very satisfying but not effort effective and rentokil fly spray. Also, leave absolutely no food out, ever, or have it under a fly screen and I've found polishing the sink dry works too as they were attracted to the dampness. You could also get fly screen for your doors and windows? There are some really good ones about that hang down with weighted ends.

Also, because our house is the highest in the area, we attract cluster flies (they look identical to house flies) in the loft. I'm talking HUNDREDS of them. It was like a horror movie everytime we went in the loft and some were sneaking out into bedrooms. I thought something like a bird had died up there, but going onto the rentokil website, its totally normal for a high countryside house. I thought about a bug bomb, but we opted for the longer term option of a large industrial grade electric blue light fly killer permanently installed up there. It does the trick.