I am sick of slugs INSIDE my house!

[MrsSeanBean]

We have a 1920s brick house.

Slugs somehow get inside the house - mainly at night - and I come down to their horrible slimy trails all over the floor every morning.

I called the pest control people at the council who advised me to lay cracked eggshells outside the air-bricks, but still the problem persists. Aside from laying pellets inside the house (dodgy), I don't know what else to do. Sometimes I come down in the night to get a glass of water and find the slugs crawling around. My patience and sanity is wearing very thin.

(a) Does anyone else have this hideous problem;
(b) if so, how did you solve it?

I found one this morning (another one). Is it the mild weather that's keeping them going? I'm considering a de-humidifier anyone tried one?

I grew up in a damp old house in the country and hated the trails the wee sluggy bastards left everywhere. On moving to the city, I never gave slugs a secon thought until... duh duh duh... One was coming up the plughole in my kitchen sink in the first home I had ever owned having lived in not-ground-floor flats for years. OMG I am still disturbed by this and sometimes have been known to take a stiletto heel to the little fuckers if I see them in the garden.

I am a bit brave now (ie can lift a spider in my hands - go me) as I have been a single Mum for a long time and my daughter (13) spotted one on the workshop when up getting a glass of water in the middle of the night the other night, screamed an almighty scream and I removed it. With my own bare hands. I picked up my fellow planet dweller, safe in the knowledge he/she carried no diease other than slimeyness and chucked him across the garden.

The end.

ps my worst experience was finding a sleeping bat in the arm of my dressing gown aged 12. I DO NOT do bats

p.s. sorry for not offering solutions. Salt for me!

We have had this problem for the seven years we have lived here. have tried everything. when we have had a few drinks we sometimes salt them but mainly i now just brush away their trails and am resigned. They come up through our floor boards as we have no foundations (very old house).

I was wondering why people won't use slug pellets to kill slugs?

because the kids might eat them. putting them outside makes no difference

Some good ideas here! Just to follow bramblyhedge it's true that no foundations is probably the cause of a lot of these issues, our Victorian terrace is 105yrs old and literally bricked into mud, v normal. I have just caught 2 slugs exploring the kitchen floor, picked them up in kitchen towel - wrapped it up and flushed down loo. Wet nights like tonight are worst, we often find gross trails on shoes and bags in the hall. Husband prefers the salting method ...

I was wondering why people won't use slug pellets to kill slugs?

because if a bird or animal eats either the poisoned slug or a pellet, they get poisoned too. (I'd never considered kids eating the pellets TBH)

Those of you worrying about damp - my house is only 16 years old, no damp problems. I used to keep the bin just inside the back door that they squeeze under, maybe the smell attracted them. Moved the bin, now the dog sleeps near there ... haven't noticed any trails since that change...

I used to put newspaper down where they came in then salt on the newspaper.
In the hope that the slimy yucky mess would be absorbed by the newspaper.

I did that until the 'slug torrent' stopped.
That house also had rats (inside and out)

We moved. New house had frogs and slugs!

We moved. One day when I was thinking out loud about what pests this new house has. Ds wisely said "noisy neighbours" :o

I might try the salt on newspaper trick. Slugs are SO disgusting!

i am sooo glad i've found this topic! We moved into our new house this summer and the last couple of weeks since its all gone cold and wet i've noticed each morning i am greeted by 3 or 4 of the disgusting buggers. At first i just picked them up and chucked them outside but my OH pointed out that they are most likely the same ones each time, and then when he suggested they maybe laying eggs i had to reluctantly add them to my list of things that have to be killed (flies and wasps. Hate them. Not spiders though because they keep away the flies, as long as they stay away from me that is!).
Up to now i have either been chucking them down the loo or sucking them up in the hoover (quite satisfying seeing them dissapear and hear them go up the hoover lol). I've read through all the suggestions on here, and to be honest i have no idea how they are getting in and to be honest have better things to do than stay up all night to wait for them to appear! I don't feel comfortable with leaving salt or beer around with the children so will probably just keep with my hoover and loo solution. I did however cringe to read someone saying here that slugs can sometimes survive under water and climb up pipes (god damn determined buggers) because i have once or twice noticed some slug trails in the bathroom, and seeing the bathroom is upstairs it leads me think they must be climbing back up the loo which is probably the yuckiest thing i can think of!! so i will to do what someone else suggested and throw them in loo followed by bleach then flushing them after 5 or 10 minutes to make sure they die!!

I keep old marg tubs, and when I find a slug I put it in the tub to die a slow (and unwitnessed death. We call it "the tub of death".
Remember to bin it every week or so, especially in the summer, or the "death" smell becomes overpowering.
I find it oddly fascinating seeing the amount of liquid in the bottom of the tub though (I suspect they slime themselves to death), that might just be me though.

But if you hoover them they might still be alive and find their way slowly out the hoover, coming down the pipe! Take 'em outside and pour salt on them.

We had some under our stairs which is in the middle of hte house so no idea how they got there. I'd come down in the night and stand on them accidently . There were about 4 massive ones and I think we've killed them all now.

@viva - i don't anything can survive in a vacuum i.e. No air, plus they are always there when i empty the hoover (into a tied plastic bag because i hate the dust may i add) in the bin. Anyway found 3 unfortunate slimey buggers around the house this morning. Scooped em up and marched up to the bathroom, dropped em in the loo followed by thrust of bleach where i left em for around 10 minutes. When i returned i could just make out their motionless corpses at the bottom fizzing away before i flushed em safe in the knowledge them won't be coming back! Never been so satisfied to clean my loo i have to say lol

i hate hate hate slugs! eeewww yuck yuck yuck. i show no mercy. i got a bowl outside filled with salt which i put them in. Loving all these 'disposal' suggestions i have been reading here. Will have to try out the toilet one. Hopefully mr toilet duck is up to the task!

yeah toilet duck should suffice :) i have a bottle of tesco loo cleaner and a domestos thick bleach at the my moment in my bathroom but chose the domestos because i felt it would be stronger. oh dear i am so going to come in my next life as a slug and someone will throw me down the loo and squirt bleach on me or suck me up a hoover!! :(

haha yeah and i'll come back as a slug and be thrown in a bowl of salt! Even worse lucy you'll come back as a germ watching someone place a new bottle of bleach on the toilet cistern above you, no escape, but yet knowing the inevitable will happen when they will come back, reach for the bleach and slowly unscrew it and squirt it around and engulf you in acidic bleach!

Haha sorry lucy. Am in a ludicrous mood for some reason this evening and only taking advantage of your guilt for killing creatures. I now what you mean though i do feel guilty for the slugs too but they will only come back in if you put them outside. Sorry for the slight hijack of this topic too

@fluffysarsh wow thats quite a graphic description lol. What drugs you on?! Lol Tbh i think if i was a germ in a toilet getting shit on all day in the end i think i'd be quite glad to be bleached to death!! But yeah that would be the worse thing to back as in another life. God this topic has got strange.......But yeah since you ask, being vegetarian, i do naturally feel a bit guilty about killing things, and i don't like to kill things unless it has to be. For me its just wasps, flies and slugs, and then i hate seeing them squirm. But no germs is certainly not something i feel guilty about but i'll probably never gonna look at cleaning the toilet in quite the same way now thanks to you lol x

we've a 120 yr old house and had slugs in our kitchen off and on for years, in cupboards (blech), we've just had a new kitchen fitted last week, everything ripped out and the builders swear they've filled every hole, lo and behold night before last a bloody big bugger slithering along in front of my brand new washing machine, it met a salty end but I have no idea where it came from, I've pushed pellets underneath the washer but i swear i can hear the theme tune to Mission Impossible through the night...took to getting up around 2.00 to try and catch them....

Slugs like damp, and they like something rotten to eat.

I think you need to have a look under the floor and see if there are leaks in waste or water pipes (especially under kitchens), or it might just be that you have a high water table and the ground is rather wet and there is no oversite concrete. If you tell me you have had fancy new flooring fitted and you can't possibly look under it I shall sigh.

Subfloor voids under timber floors need to be ventilated with plenty of airbricks. See if you have plenty, and that they are not choked with cobwebs, rubble and dirt.

You can put as many slug pellets as you want under the floor, since no children or pets will be down there to eat them.

As you probably know, common causes of damp at about ground level are paths, patios and flowerbeds which have raised the ground level against the house walls, above what was intended when they were built. This is especially bad if it bridges a damp course. Some older houses did not have a DPC when built, but over the last 50 years or so most will have had one added to achieve a mortgage, even if only an injected chemical.

builder said the damp course is fine and it's a concrete floor which I've had wood flooring put over, outside is a concrete yard, we've just had all along the bottom of the house wall replastered on the outside but there is a low airbrick near the back door and there probably is water under the house somewhere since we're quite near a river...I think I'm doomed....

look for gaps round pipes going through walls (especially near hoppers or gullies so nice and damp) or cracks/holes in brickwork especially near iron downpipes where old iron cramps have rusted.

A concrete floor in a 120-year old house is probably a later infill, it was probably built with wooden floors (or maybe slabs on earth) unless posh enough to have Terrazzo or Granolithic.

If you have wooden floors in other parts of the house, sniff to see how damp. It is often easiest to do this with a loose board under the stairs. Later poured concrete floors will have blocked throughflow ventilation under the floors. Slugs need damp.

Repeatedly scattering slug pellets will gradually reduce the population.

i am plagued with them too.we are in a 1900s brick house.i have realised they can get through the smallest gaps and have actually seen them squeeze in between double french doors in kitchen - yuk.
No chance of me sealing up every gap.the best thing i used were blue plug pellets scattered round perimeter of house and popped into airbricks.i don't feel i can try that again as my youngest would be sure to eat them!
Last weekend i put in plug traps near house filled with cheap beer.will let you know if that works.don't fancy emptying them though and am slightly sacred by likely prospect of my son making a picnic of contents!
Joking apart i do feel i am developing a phobia about them!yuk at thought of finding them in teatowels!hope you find something that works.