My house has an extension with a couple of rooms and a bathroom; I am currently renting it to a University student. She told my wife that there often are spiders and woodlice around.
I had a look but cannot find obviously visible holes. There’s a gap between the skirting boards and the floor at one end of the room, but that’s because whoever built it was an idiot and laid down the floor with a big slope, and we’re going to fix that soon. If I poke a pencil in the gap I just end up tapping the wall.
I can’t quite figure out how these spiders and bugs came in. The place is kept clean, the windows are closed, and I can’t honestly say I see lost of bugs in the rest of the house, just the occasional woodlouse. Yet clearly they must come from somewhere.
Google searches mostly turn up bug sprays and the like. Surely there’ something I could do to help a poor girl who’s terrified of spiders? I’d appreciate any suggestions.
Have you actually seen the problem? Both of those types of critters tend to be more solitary (to an extent). It’s not like mass numbers of ants, termites, or bees. It’s nice that you’re trying to help, but is her fear really your responsibility?
Woodlice are kind of cute. There, I said it. They are of course crustaceans, not insects or arachnids, but “bug” works in common parlance.
My wife saw the problem. It’s not a biblical Plague of Spiders, but spiders do appear there more often than I’d expect, especially since I see none in the rest of the house.
I see woodlice here and there in the house on the ground floor. According to my wife, they do pop up much more often in the extensions. She tells me she tried to seal the gaps under the skirting boards with packing tape and that she finds critters stuck to it. I still can’t see much of a problem, we have carpeted floors and I expect they live under them. A friend of mine, who’s a Brit, told me that having a few woodlice and spiders is normal for UK, and that if our guest wanted to live bug free she’d be better off somewhere like Saudi Arabia.
Finding a solution to at least reduce the number of wandering creepy crawlies would definitely help keeping people happy here.
Minor update: my wife decreed that The Solution is to cut up some plastic bags in strips, stuff the plastic in the gaps under the skirting boards and nail wooden beadings all over them. My position is that it’s not going to help; still, gotta keep the peace, and I freely admit those gaps look ugly.