SLUG INVASION - please help me before I have to leave the country

[hester]

Woke up this morning to find silvery trails all over my living room rug, and some sticky patches on the floor.

It's chuffin slugs, isn't it?

I've just moved from a city centre flat to the leafy suburbs, and am realising that with leaves come bugs. Ants, giant spiders, even fornicating dragonflies floating round my home today.

But the slugs are the worst. How do I get rid of them? Is there any alternative to those blue pellets?

Good ventilation. Thats it really. They tend to thrive in musty,dark, wet conditions.

So if they're coming into my living room, does that suggest I may have damp in the walls?

do you have floorboards? They come up through those or airbricks

Yes, I just ripped up the carpets. Oh god

Anything I can do, other than relaying carpet?

I covered the giant gaps in mine with masking tape! As a stop gap (pardon the pun) before we get proper wood flooring in there

Do you think it will help to put beading round the gap at the bottom of the skirting board? Or are they just as likely to be emerging from between planks?

Ugh, I've got bare feet at the moment. Hardly dare put them down...

yes that will help, actually just realised dh did that a few months ago and it has improved. I have trodden on them before ...yuck

um.. I opened this thinking it was in gardening. eew.

Beer traps will still probably work in the house. Budget beer in margarine tubs work wonders in my garden. Slug armageddon

I tried beer traps, not a sniff of a slug. Barring entry is the only way

Right, I'm going to get that done TOMORROW.

Also went to Lakeland today to get one of their spider catcher vacuum sticks.

I am a complete wimp.

Many thanks for the advice

But where are they getting in? Have a look under a loose floorboard (perhaps under the stairs). You might have concrete oversite, or it might be bare earth. Does it look, feel or smell damp? If so, there may be a water leak from a pipe under the floor. You might be able to hear it dripping or hissing.

The airbricks should be unblocked (including removing dust and cobwebs) so that you have a good flow of air under the floor. Don't moan about it being cold; it will keep the space dry. Slugs do not like the dry.

If some idiot has built a patio, conservatory or extension which blocks the airbricks on one side of the house, there will be no airflow (as well as slugs, the damp will cause your floor timbers to rot)

Look for any signs of leaking drains, gullies, downpipes or gutters. A broken drain will give the slugs something to eat as well as making it damp.

You can scatter slug pellets under the floor if you like, and keep topping them up until they stop disappearing (the same method you use with mouse poison). You can also put slug pellets outside the hopuse near any cracks, holes or airbricks you think the slugs are using. Scatter them thinly, animals and birds are not endangered unless you make a pile of the pellets.

Wow, PigletJohn, you are SO impressive! Will you marry me? Or be my best friend?

I fear you may have a point about some idiot blocking airbricks. We moved in two months ago, and it's been nothing but grief as we gradually discover all the hidden horrors left behind by the previous owner, who has an enthusiastic but wildly incompetent DIY-er. He did indeed add a patio and an extension (complete with internal electrics hanging down an external wall, and big holes going into the roof).

The front room DOES feel damp, and cold in comparison to the rest of the house. I fear this may mean more work and more money, which we currently don't have . But I will take a look, and clear/mend anything I can, and put down slug pellets.

Do you think a dehumidifier might help?

Is your house old? Have you any outside areas where the soil level is higher than the damp proof course? Leaky gutters and blocked downpipes? My house was so damp and decrepit when we first moved in that I regularly went downstairs first thing in the morning to find snails and slugs going up the insides of my windows, and when I went into the pantry and turned the light on, lizards, YES!!! lizards, would scurry under the skirting boards.

And we found a huge decomposed rat under the floorboards. And jackdaws kept falling down our chimneys. Apart from that it was lovely.

hester, I think I would have to ask my lady-friends permission first.

As I'm a bloke, obviously I know everything about bloke things.

A dehumidifier will only help on the days you are running it, and is an expensive way to hide a (probably) simple problem.

Work on underfloor ventilation, and searching for causes of damp.

You can temoirarily lift a couple of floorboard to help the air circulate (the damp air will rise up), but find a way to prevent people or valuables falling down the hole.

PigletJohn - thank you, I'll do that. (As soon as I can find a bloke to help.)

Fellatio - blimey, your place sounds like something out of the Addams Family! Our house is 1930, and yes there is lots of broken guttering, missing tiles etc. I'm particularly suspicious of the porch area, which has big holes in the fascia and under the door, and that whole area feels damp. But at least no rats or lizards (yet).

Copper tape is your answer - find out where they are coming in and lay copper tape, it gives them an electric shock and they give up very fast after that and go bother some other poor bugger.

But it's 9.99 for a piffling little roll, so you need to find out where they're coming from and ring fence a small area, or it could get expensive!

Having said that, if yur house is damp, the cost of a bit of copper tape is the last of your worries, expense wise. Sorry to be such a doom-monger!

Copper tape? I've never heard of it! Do they sell it in Homebase?

As for the prospect of a soggy house, I'm adopting the sticking-fingers-in-my-ears-and-singing-tra-la-la position right now - at least until I can afford to do something about it!

It'll get infinitely worse if you leave it....I speaks from experience.

Maybe Homebase, but definitely any good garden centre.

Yes, coppertape is widely available. See here

You haven't lived until you've trodden on a large slug while walking across a darkened kitchen in bare feet. Yeuch! Our old house was full of them; slug pellets behind the kickboards under the kitchen cabinets evetually saw them off.

Had a rat too, that came up through a hole in the floorboards and nicked bananas out of the fruit-bowl on the kitchen table.

Isn't nature wonderful?

Oh yes, I had one in the toe of my welly - yeuch!