Booklice in new build

[Emmyyyx]

We moved into a new build January 20 and over the last week found booklice all in the main bathroom and then my sons room which is the room next to it!

Went on a hunt around the house and found multiple in all rooms - I’m killing loads every day, hoovering all the time, bleached all skirting and bathrooms!

It’s making me ill as I’m constantly on the hunt for them and constantly crying about it (I am pregnant so hormones won’t be helping)

Bought 2 plug in dehumidifiers and hygrometers and loads of disposable dehumidifiers and whacked the heating up the last 3 days but it’s not something I can do constantly!

I know they are harmless but it’s the fact they breed so quickly I feel if I’m not constantly on the go getting rid of them then my house will be over run.

Anyone had these in a new build and managed to get rid of them??? My partner tells me when the house dries out they will go but I can’t cope with another year of this!!

Hello.. are you still have a problem with these? We’ve had them since around august and they’re driving me crazy. We moved into a new build in February.

Hello.. did you ever get rid of these?

We had a pest company that came and fogged our house and sprayed in case they tried to come back. And I went from seeing like 30 a day to one or two a week right after they fogged and now I don’t see any at all. So my advice would be call around to pest companies and get someone that will fog your house and spray for them. Hope this helps! 🙏

Hey. Tried the dehumidifier route and been keeping humidity below 45-%rh for the past 2 months. Still finding them everywhere just in less numbers. If you don’t mind me asking @Lizannchandler how much were you quoted for this? And did they do the whole house? At my wits end with the bugs so going to explore this avenue.

We had this badly in summer. End of august in England. It was warm weather and some bread had gone mouldy in bread bin and not been emptied. They filled entire kitchen. We binned all food and all appliances as they had infested everything without us realising. Spent 5 days bleaching and steaming. Washed all pots pans etc and stacked them in living room and dining room. Waited four weeks. Didn’t see any bugs. Felt confident to move back into kitchen. It was hell. I cried so much. But the hard work had eventually paid off. Would never want to go through it again. Now, 2.5months later we’ve found them again. But now they are in the whole house. Including bedrooms. Clothes. Everywhere. Find a few in every place I look. It’s badly impacted on my mental health. Pest control said spraying gives more moisture which they love but also, there’s so many that hide in every single crack in Your house eg even inside picture frames and under lids of jars etc that spraying will never coat them all. They’ll just keep coming. I read about getting humidity to about 43 for 16 days straight and they’ll all die. But I leave humidifier in one room for two days straight and it only brings it down to 52 ish. In meantime they’ll just keep reproducing in rest of rooms and then I’ll move dehumidifier and then tackle another room but then the first room gets infested again. It’s a living nightmare. I don’t see light at the end of the tunnel and I don’t know how to move past this. I can’t relax at all in my own home. Got a little girl and she is seeing her mum crying and very gloomy. She’s only ever seen me happy before. I can’t sleep so that makes me worse as well. It is overwhelming. Literally. People who have never been through it don’t understand. I miss those days when I’d never heard or them, never seen them and was happy!

I know the feeling :-( end of august was when we found them too. Are you in a new build? We saw them in august for the first time too and now they’re everywhere in every room

It was $150 dollars total and it knocked our problem out completely

Yes they did our whole house

Not a new build for us. Our house is about 40-50yrs old.
@Lizannchandler please can you share as much detail as possible? What exactly did they use. How much disruption to your life was it. Moved out and full house clean taking children away for a few days? Our pest control companies that i contacted either said they don’t do it at all or they could do it but they’d still be doing it another ten times because the bugs hide so well and will just keep coming out of cracks as they are attracted to damp and mould and the slightest bit hidden anywhere they’ll keep reproducing for. Struggling being a mum and working full time and trying to take care of the house. It is literally impossible to do it all. It’s making me so stressed and anxious.

It’s the worse feeling in the world, Ive not slept properly in months. I just wish I knew where they were breeding and what the one stop solution is to get ridding of them :-(

Ours are in every room in our new build too. We’ve tried running 2 dehumidifiers for 3 months with the humidity staying below 40% and they’re still everywhere. We paid for a new build surveyor to survey the whole home to try and find a source of moisture, but they couldn’t locate any moisture or leaks anywhere. At our wits end too as pest control have said without locating a source, it’s pointless spraying as they will just keep coming back and end up very costly.

Similar situation to us. How long have you lived there? I’m finding ours are mostly on the grout / sealing of bathroom and kitchen and in the shower traps. Then there’s around 5 in each room on the walls at any one time I look. I am seriously cracking up!

Oh nooo. Online it said that 16 days of 43% humidity would kill them all off. That’s devastating to here that it didn’t work. I mean I am struggling to get humidity below 50 but I still had hope. Now you’re saying you tried and it didn’t work. I honestly don’t know what the hell to do. I miss my old life when I could relax in my house and not constantly be shining a torch looking on every surface constantly. I feel so sick at the thought of being at home. Life shouldn’t be like this. I miss being happy. It’s totally and utterly soul destroying. I feel total despair. I’m trying to find bits of joy in life but then my mind is jolted back to the fact that I’ve got this problem in my house and I seem to have no way of fixing it. Ever!?

Have you tried to look for leaks and mould etc?

We moved in last December. Only noticed the bugs after the very humid summer we had. Ours are in similar locations to yours by the sounds. They’re on the mastic seals in the kitchen worktops and sockets more often than not, but are mainly located at random places on the plasterboard walls. Probably finding 4/5 per room daily and interestingly they all seem to be adult ones. I’m very rarely finding the smaller ones. I’m the same though, constantly going around the house with a torch and disposing of any I find down the toilet. It makes me not want to live in the house and reluctant to decorate. We have no curtains hung as I’m afraid the will hide amongst them. When did yours start appearing?

i had the back doors open when we had that really hot weather, was either julY or august.
I was on the phone and sat back on the chair and looked up and there were around 100 on the ceiling. I hoovered them all up and then ever since then I’ve been finding them everywhere! Mainly in the bathrooms and kitchen. Do you have any vinyl flooring in your house? I find eggs / smaller ones in the corner of the bathrooms where we have vinyl flooring

Hello! Has your situation improved at all?

Hello everyone,

I am facing booklices issue too :-( I live here for 5 years, so it's not a new build. I've had one booklice in the toilets every four months, so no big deal...
But since the beginning of the year, I found them in every room, crawling on the walls :-( For some reason, they like to appear at midnight, so I vaccum my walls at midnight with a torch, what a sad life :-(

I know what causes this problem : my mechanical ventilation system is broken, but the society who manage the building didn't tell us... It seems to be broken since August ! I ask my neighbourgs to check their system, but they didn't answer me. I had a little mould on the ceiling but I clean it. Now I don't have mould anymore, but booklices are still here.

I bought diatomaceous earth yesterday, I hope it'll work.

I am French living in France, excuse me if I make mistake in English :-)

Havent been on this thread since early 2022.We thought we had cleared our problem (for nearly 18months) but over the last 2 months we have started seeing the little bugs back again 😭 not in large numbers, just the odd few on windowsills, in a jigsaw box and in a small pile of papers.
I have been suffering severe anxiety since the original problem started back in late 2021 (major bug phobia and ocd checking through things) obviously this has become a lot worse since we’ve started finding them again. I think I need to take a trip to the doctors as I’m really struggling. I’m worrying that the number of them will explode like before.
we have been using the zero in bug spray from screw fix and this tends to work (since using this the ones we find have all been dead).
Just can’t believe they are back again. Just wish there was an easy way to be completely rid of them. It’s got to the point where I just don’t want to be in the house. I hate the place 😢

So glad I found this thread but also disheartened that no one has managed to successfully get rid of them. We noticed ours in the kitchen about 2 month ago and have had our kitchen contents in the conservatory ever since, with a 6 month old it’s not ideal and I’m beyond myself with what else to do. They don’t seem to have moved into any other room. I’m wondering if a new kitchen would get rid of them? Although funds will not allow this for Atleast another couple years

How is this kitchen ventilated? Apart from the sink and cooking steam, are there any other sources of humidity?

Is it a new build? Do you have a leak anywhere in the kitchen?

Also glad I found this, we’ve found loads in our mug cupboard in kitchen of new build. How I’ll ever make a coffee again unparanoid I don’t know

Hi
any luck with the booklice
i had smokebombed in October and realised that they’re still present downstrz in hallway and lounge
so fed up
and how do you use the dettol? Do you dilute and apply
spent few hundred pounds on insecticide and powders and nowhere near rid intact seen baby ones on walls which means they’re hatching

Hi do you still have the booklice problem and how did you use the dettol
was it applied neat?
thanks in advance
I’m so fed up of thwm
my humidity is down and they seem to be in hallway and lounge more than anywhere else
does anyone know wether professional pest control spraying helps or not?