Ants are the one household pest where a determined householder frequently succeeds without us. Do these four things properly and you may not need to call anyone.
Follow the trail to the entry point, remove the food, clean the trail properly, and seal the route.
Professional treatment is £190 flat and £220 house — but unlike most pests, a careful householder often resolves an ant problem without it.
The step people skip, and the one that makes everything else work.
Ants in a line are following a chemical trail between a food source and a nest. That line leads to exactly where they are entering the building, which is the piece of information you actually need.
Ten minutes doing this beats an afternoon of spraying.
Ants come in for something sweet or greasy. Cut the supply and the trail loses its purpose:
Now clean it — and clean it in a way that removes the chemical trail, not just the visible ants.
Hot soapy water works. A dilute vinegar solution works. What matters is doing the whole route, including up the wall and along the skirting, not just the stretch across the worktop where you noticed them.
Half-cleaning a trail is why people find the ants back in the same line an hour later.
See our complete service, published prices and treatment information.
View Ant Control Harrow →Now that you know where they enter, close it. Frequently a small job:
If you do only one thing from this page, do this one. A properly sealed entry point is the difference between one summer of ants and every summer of ants.
Bait stations are the one over-the-counter product with a sensible mechanism: workers carry the bait back to the colony rather than dying on the spot.
They can work on a modest problem. Two things limit them: they are weaker than professional products, and they need to be on the actual trail rather than tucked in a corner.
Do not spray and bait at the same time. Spraying kills the workers that would have carried the bait home — the two cancel each other out, and it is the most common DIY mistake with ants.
It makes no difference. The colony replaces them faster than you can wipe them up.
A trail that formed because of one spill often will, once the spill is gone. An established route into a kitchen usually will not.
Useful to know where it is, not necessary to destroy it yourself. Treatment aimed at the colony does not require you to dig anything up.
Wasps as well? That one has a fixed published price too — £90 across Harrow, with our guaranteed service.
Follow the trail to the entry point, remove the food drawing them, clean the whole trail, and seal the route in.
The colony is still there and enough chemical trail often remains. Clean the whole route, not just the visible stretch.
They kill the ants present and do nothing to the colony, so a new trail usually appears the same day.
They can on a modest problem. Place them directly on the trail — and do not spray at the same time.
No. Spraying kills the workers that would have carried the bait to the colony.
Not reliably. Vinegar helps clean the chemical trail; the rest are folklore.
It rarely reaches deep enough, damages the lawn, and does not address the route indoors.
When the trail returns within days despite cleaning, when there are multiple entry points, or when it has run for weeks.
Tell us where they enter and how long it has been going on. If it sounds like a job you can finish yourself, we will say so.
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