Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Welcome to another episode of Peskies Pest Control podcast here in Birmingham Alabama with Michael and Travis. We do this podcast as a community service for Birmingham, Hoover, Vestavia Hills, Mountain Brook, Helena, Pelham and all other surrounding areas!
Michael Wienecke
So the other day, I got a customer called in and they were complaining about these little black flying insects all around her house, she had said that they were coming out of the drains, that she had tried pouring, bleach, baking soda, pretty much everything but the kitchen sink down the drains. So we got we got to the house, and we were doing our full inspection. As soon as we walked in the door, we had one of these little, these black bunny eared flies land on our on our shoulder, and it was a drain flaw. So Travis wants to tell everybody about drain flaws.
Travis McGowin
You know, a lot of people I think, probably assume that, you know, they’re, they’re exempt from drain flies. You know, like a lot of people probably assume they’re exempt from a lot of insects. But it’s really kind of a common problem for most households at some point or another. When you think about a drain, and a lot of people, you know, may not be really familiar with how plumbing works. But when you think about a drain, whether it’s your sink, in the bathrooms and the kitchens, you’re always going to have moisture in there. So you’re always going to have moisture sitting in the bottom of the drain. And that’s actually by design. I mean, obviously, you use a drain your wash something down the sink, it’s gonna get wet, but you have what’s called a P trap and the bottom that that holds moisture, 100% of the time, you know, there’s always something in the drain. And over time, these drains holding that moisture and then getting this matter. Rinse down the drain. Over time just creates a buildup. And that’s something that these drain flies love to eat off of.
Michael Wienecke
Yeah, so just you know with that with that P trap, if there’s not that plug of water there or anything keeping it you will have a horrible smell in your home. Because I’ve experienced that myself. And it’s not it’s not fun.
Travis McGowin
Well, not only just a horrible smell, but you also run the risk of having other insects, especially if you’re on like a sewer system for a municipality, you run the risk of having something else come up the drain.
Michael Wienecke
Oh, yeah, say it with cockroaches, for sure. But yeah, with that organic matter in that drain, just building up hair, you know, all that nasty stuff, food, all that stuff, that’s just, you know, sitting in that that moisture, those those larva can feed off of that. And it just, it builds up over time. And eventually, once you’ve got the larva that of that of you know, the adults coming out of the drain, that’s where they’re pouring out of the drains. And then all of a sudden, you’ve got you an infestation, and you don’t know where it’s coming from,
Travis McGowin
you know, and the other crazy thing I’ve seen too, I was doing an inspection on a house that had a crawlspace one day. And as I was under their crawl, and I got up underneath the area of the kitchen, and I noticed that there was a gigantic puddle of water, like I said in the in the dirt of the crawlspace directly underneath the kitchen and the customer had a leak that they did not know about that was sitting there just constantly dripping. And when I shined my flashlight over to look at the water, it was like the water was moving. And there were adult drain flies, you know, on the bottom of the sub floor, you know where I could see. And then there were just 1000s and 1000s of these larva inside of this water that had leaked from the kitchen. So not always, they don’t always just come from drains.
Michael Wienecke
That’s true. And then I’ve had some where, you know, I had a customer we treated the dragonflies came back we treated they came back you know, after a month or so finally went up onto the house pulled the the clean out and his pipe was bent. So there was the gravity was just it was it was causing it to bow in the middle of the pipe. So it was just sitting there. Got our, our borescope in there. And I could actually see where same thing you’d said the water had built up right there and the larva would just crawling all through that pipe area. So ended up having to get a plumber out. And after that it did solve the issue after we traded for the fourth or fifth time.
Travis McGowin
Well, you can It’s funny you say that too. I had a customer also that that was having some dragonfly issues, you know, and we did the typical things we inspected, we treated the drains that sort of thing. And you know, nothing really ever seemed to definitively work like you said it would get a little better and then it would get worse. And so I started talking to the customer a little bit more. And I mentioned something about a leak or an issue with their drainage and you know, their plumbing system for their house. And it was like a light bulb kicked on and he said well actually it’s funny that you say that we’re working with the insurance company right now we have a pipe in that’s inside of our foundation I guess where the foundation that shifted and it cracked it and so they literally little bit further down the road had to have that concrete tore up inside their house and the drain fixed and then report concrete redo all the floors and everything was a big ordeal but and that is solve their problem. I hadn’t had a problem since. Well, I’ll
Michael Wienecke
say with that being said, you know, I would say drain flies. I mean Hear it pesky as you know, we cover that in our in our pest control program. You know, it’s it’s a hard problem to treat yourself I mean you can put something down that’s going to eat that organic matter but you know just just having a pest control company that you know you can rely on and of course they’re gonna give you a warranty even a one time pass if you if you come out, we come out we do a treatment like that. We’re going to give you a warranty on that and if they come back, of course we’re going to honor that warranty and come right back out and treat so
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
