Eliminating Sewer Flies

 

NANCY: Oh, hi. Well, we have had sewer flies in the basement and they’re coming up into the kitchen and the bathroom. And this house is about 90 years old. And last summer we had them bad and we tried the bleach and the Pine Sol and we thought we had it licked. We even covered the drain in the basement.

 

LESLIE: And when you covered the drain in the basement, you mean with tape so you know that they were coming from that drain itself?

 

NANCY: No, we got a regular stopper put in.

 

LESLIE: OK.

 

NANCY: But now they’re back. (chuckles)

 

LESLIE: Well, Nancy, the reason why you end up with sewer flies is because they love organic debris. They like to eat it, they like to find it. That’s in all of the drains and anywhere in the home and that’s what they feed off of and then they come up into your house and you know that they’re sewer flies because when you crush them – not that you’re hurting them or you’re killing them; we’re trying to be friendly – but when you do squish them they turn to dust; you end up with this like powder-like residue. That’s how you identify them as the sewer flies.

 

NANCY: Right.

 

LESLIE: And what you really need to do, Nancy, is find out exactly where they’re coming from. So what you can do is you can take some tape and put the tape over the drains that you suspect that they’re coming from and let it sit for, you know, a day or so and then pull it off and you know exactly where they’re coming from because you’ll see them on the back side of the tape. And then the reason that you’re not getting – you know, you’re not having success in getting rid of them is because you need to use one of these sort of biochemical products that are meant to get rid of that organic debris. The bleach isn’t going to do it. You need something that’s made to go into the drain and get rid of all of that debris that sits in there that they eat.

 

NANCY: Oh, OK. I appreciate that.

 

TOM: You’re welcome. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.