Our tenants have got moths in the carpet. Do we have to replace them?

[thereistheball]

That's it really. We live in France and have rented our house out. The tenants have just told us that there are moths and the carpets (which are not even 4 years old) are almost threadbare in places.

Is there anything I can advise them to do to get rid of them? Or do we have to remove (and then replace) the carpets? They are fitted all over the first floor (3 bedrooms) and stairs, except for in the bathroom, so we'd rather not do this if we don't have to.

Ps - They also say the moths have been there since they moved into the property. I am not going to dispute that, although that would mean they were in place when we were, which I was not aware of.

do you have a property management company in place or are you letting direct?

I'm not sure why you wouldn't have to replace them?

Are you suggesting the tenents should either live with it or replace them themselves?

It's your responsibility as the landlord to deal with pests and upkeep of the home, it's what they pay rent for unless you can prove it's done to their neglegence (which you say is not the case.)

Sorry if that's not what you want to hear!

I'd want them replaced as a tenant and would be very unhappy if they weren't especially if they got into my cashmere.

Can you use something to deter moths in the future perhaps? Sorry a bit clueless but know cedar balls etc help in wardrobes.

It sounds like an unlikely thing for even an unreasonable tenant to make up if the carpets were in good nick to begin with. They'll realise that it will be disruptive to them to get the work done, so I'd assume that it must be pretty bad for them to complain.

It's not negligence to get moths in carpets anyway. We have them in our hall carpet, the brightest busiest part of the flat, cleaned the most often.

Google has told me that having the carpets shampooed might help. Haven't tried yet.

Sorry, I meant that the alternative to replacing the carpets would be to sand and polish the floorboards, and provide rugs for the bedrooms and stairs, which I think would be cheaper (haven't checked yet). In no way do I blame the tenants for this!

We do have a management company in place but they aren't v helpful. I suppose that if we do fit new carpets then they would be able to help with that.

Also, I don't know the extent of the damage. If it's just a few small patches and the moths can be got rid of (can they? I don't know), mightn't the tenants prefer not to have the hassle of us fitting new carpet in each room?

might the tenants send some photos of the damage? I would, if my LL asked me to.

I was thinking the same thing, Hero. I've asked the agents to ask them to.

we've had them in a couple of rooms. the only way to get rid of them is to have the relevant carpets fumigated by a reputable company - stainmaster did ours in the uk. i've posted on here about them previously as i'd never heard of them before and we only realised because we were having carpet replaced.

you get tiny grains of rice around edges and they really go for dark areas under units. the man said they are getting a lot more instances and he thinks its due to less pesticides being used.

don't think shampooing will solve the problem as our lounge got cleaned at least once per year and we still had them

absolutely not the tennants fault - they can come in via gaps in roof/walls apparently