Sewer Flies – Pest Control and Treatment
Unfortunately, forgetting about a drain in your house once can already be a great invitation for sewer flies. These disgusting creatures are always on the lookout for some built up decaying organic matter in people’s houses.
There is all that dirt that can be found in drains that you have forgot to clean or haven’t used in a while. It provides the perfect place for sewer flies to breed and it also contains plenty of nutritional value for them.
Chances are that you are only going to see these nuisances in their adult stage. They are commonly called as moth flies because their whole body is covered with hairs. With their prominent antennae and furry appearance, they look quite similar to moths.
In this article, we are going to talk a little bit about how dangerous sewer flies actually are and how to get rid of them.
How do You Get Rid of Sewer Flies?
What might be a challenging part about getting rid of sewer flies is to find where they come from. Although kitchen and bathroom drains are two of the most common spots, they can choose other moisty places as well.
For example, people often find out that there is a broken pipe, a leaking washing machine or a messy trash can that causes the problem. Either way, adult sewer flies mostly spend their time near their breeding site.
You can usually find them on the walls, on kitchen counters or on tiles, but they can be anywhere in the house. Once you have found their breeding spot, it is really just a two-step process. The first is to find a good method to get rid of the built up organic matter in the drain.
This can be done with a good drain cleaner but there also a couple of house remedies that work. Once the drain is thoroughly cleaned and there is no trace of the built up debris, you can start eliminating adult sewer flies.
There are some pretty good pyrethrin sprays available for this purpose. These should be sprayed in the air rather than aiming directly on the wall.
Are Sewer Flies Dangerous?
Sewer flies can become dangerous to the health of those living in your household if there are too many of them. This also includes your pets because bacteria can get in their food, their mouth and on their fur. Other than that, sewer flies are pretty much harmless because they cannot bite or cause any damage.
They are mostly just standing on the wall motionlessly, sometimes jumping here and there. But if there is over a hundred sewer flies in your house jumping around and spreading bacteria, then someone can quickly become sick.
There are also certain sewer fly species that can cause parasitic infestation in humans, but they are rather rare. This is also called as myiasis and it includes the adult fly laying eggs inside the host, be it a human or an animal. Then, these eggs hatch in the host and the larvae start to feed on the tissue and grow.
Can Sewer Flies Make You Sick?
If you find out that there are some sewer flies in your house, there is no need to panic. Or at least if there is not too many of them. While they are not particularly harmful in small numbers, they can become a real problem if you let them reproduce.
After all, these little nuisances live in the moist dirt that gets accumulated in drains. Those bacteria stick to their body and as they leave their breeding site, they can spread it in the house. Sewer flies can’t directly transmit diseases but the bacteria they carry can certainly cause health problems.
This is why it is so important to grab that drain cleaner right away and find their breeding site. They can reproduce in quite a rapid rate and more of them can emerge in a couple of days. In case you have pets at home, they can spread the bacteria to them as well.
If there is anyone in the house susceptible to bronchial asthma, then a large number of sewer flies can surely facilitate this health condition.
Do Sewer Flies Bite Humans?
Although there are many types of flies that can appear in a home environment, sewer flies are not among those that can bite humans. They are simply not evolved that way and they don’t have any aggressive tendencies either.
You are mostly going to see them standing on the walls and occasionally going back to their breeding site, which is typically in a drain. Since they can’t even fly that much, their wings are only there to help them perform big jumps.
Therefore, they are kind of slow. Sewer flies are not dangerous in the sense of causing physical harm, they are just annoying. The more of them appear in your house, the longer it takes to get rid of them, which is why you need to find a remedy to the problem as soon as possible.
How Long do Sewer Flies Live?
Once you have successfully cleaned the drain to the point where there is no more larvae or organic matter in it, adult sewer flies won’t be able to reproduce. However, you will still need to use a spray to get rid of them or wait until they die.
This really depends on how many of them there are in your house and how annoying of a problem it is. When a sewer fly infestation happens, people usually have no idea about it until the adult flies emerge. This is because the larvae and juveniles are usually hidden in the drains.
- Related: Drain Fly Life Cycle
The adults that hang around near the drains live around two weeks. As long as their breeding site is untouched, they quickly get replaced, making it seem like that adults live for a long time. In fact, once the problematic drain in the house is clean and fixed, they are going to disappear in the span of two weeks.
