Where do wood lice come from in houses and apartments and what is the reason for their appearance

Next you will learn:

• Where do woodlice usually come from in apartments and why they can most often be found in bathrooms and toilets;
• What are the optimal conditions for the life and reproduction of wood lice;
• Where should you look for wood lice in an apartment building in the first place, and what actions to take in order to reliably get rid of them.

As well as a number of other interesting and useful nuances regarding the appearance of wood lice in apartments and houses.

Woodlice, as can be easily understood from their name, are creatures that love moisture and dampness. Their natural habitats in nature are the forest floor, wood and stones lying on wet ground, the banks of water bodies and spontaneously formed swamps.

Accordingly, in the buildings of people, similar places are attractive to them - damp cellars, basements, technical rooms and utility lines, in which dampness is constantly present, as well as attics with a leaking roof. Therefore, when figuring out where wood lice come from in an apartment, you should first of all inspect such places in your home.

It is interesting

An ordinary person without proper training may think that wood lice are insects.In reality, this is not so - they belong to the suborder of crustaceans, and even have gills.

What attracts wood lice directly to apartments, for example, from a damp basement or attic? As a rule, these creatures, in addition to dampness, also gravitate to places with elevated temperatures: 22-24 ° C, high humidity, lack of normal ventilation, the presence of scarce, but constant sources of food (they can serve as a thin layer of dust and mucus on the tile) - all this makes the apartment quite a comfortable place for small crustaceans.

So, it is important to remember: wood lice appear in the apartment when there is always an excess of moisture in a particular room. That is why these guests most often choose bathrooms, toilets and kitchens, crawling here from their breeding grounds. Sometimes wood lice breed in attics in literally hundreds and thousands, after which they climb into living quarters through the ventilation system.

On a note

However, before you start to figure out where wood lice come from in your home, it’s useful to first make sure that these creatures are in front of you. By the way, many housewives easily confuse wood lice with silverfish, despite the fact that the difference between these arthropods is quite noticeable. Look carefully at the photo below - they show woodlice and silverfish close-up. The former live in wet places, the latter in dry ones; and otherwise their lifestyle and diet vary greatly.

 

How and where wood lice enter the room

As mentioned above, wood lice appear in the apartment mainly from the basements and attics of multi-storey buildings, as well as from the structures of engineering networks - heating mains, electrical cable trenches, sewer tunnels, garages and various technical pits. These small crustaceans are quite mobile, but it is difficult for them to actively move along vertical walls and structures inside houses. Therefore, most often wood lice appear in apartments on the first and last floors - it is easiest for them to get here from the basement or damp attic.

In addition, woodlice in an apartment are sometimes taken from other premises that may be located nearby: supermarket warehouses on the ground floors of apartment buildings, self-built garages adjacent to the wall of a residential building, and also from sewer channels.

It may seem strange to someone that wood lice are able to multiply very actively in attics - how do they survive here at all and what do they eat? In fact, everything is quite simple: the pioneer individuals who happened to be here among the perennial layer of pigeon droppings find quite good conditions for reproduction.

• Firstly, bird droppings contain the remains of undigested seeds, which are quite suitable for crustaceans as food, as well as other organic matter that is abundant in attics;
• Secondly, the roofs of apartment buildings are rarely repaired, and therefore often leak, providing the necessary dampness;
• And finally, thirdly, with poor ventilation and a leaking roof, even a little rain will provide almost 100% relative humidity for many days ahead.

It is not surprising that under such favorable conditions for wood lice, they sometimes breed in attics in incredible numbers and begin to literally attack the inhabitants of the upper floors. Cases of penetration of wood lice into the bathrooms and toilets of apartments from attics are generally rarer compared to basements, but they are characterized by a very large number of uninvited guests entering the apartment.

On a note

In local city news from different parts of the country, reports regularly appear about the influx of wood lice precisely on the top floors and precisely from the ventilation ducts. Uninvited guests can be so numerous that they literally crawl along the walls in a continuous stream, fall into dishes, crawl into furniture. And what is most interesting is that in such situations, SES workers do not always notice any violations of the sanitary condition of houses and, accordingly, do not take any action.

Usually, in practice, the situation is as follows: wood lice appear in the apartment one by one, at first in small quantities, and rarely catch the eye. As a result, the first newcomers are unnoticed by the homeowners.

Later, when several dozen uninvited guests migrate to the apartment, they eventually accidentally catch their eye in the bathroom or toilet, and then the owners begin to panic a little - after a careful examination of the room, it becomes clear that the apartment is full of wood lice! The first question is where did they come from in the apartment and how to get rid of them?

Further, they begin to fight with wood lice, as with cockroaches - crayons, Dichlorvos, even insecticidal gels.All this can really give a certain effect, but first of all, you need to find out where the "abode" of dampness lovers is located and eliminate the source of this very dampness.

If it is not possible to quickly solve the problem with dampness, then it is useful to take care to block the penetration of wood lice from a damp room into apartments.

 

Where do wood lice live in the city

In different cities, biologists have repeatedly conducted research to find out the places where wood lice prefer to live. It turned out that these small crustaceans live mainly in the following places:

• front gardens and spaces under fences;
• along the walls of houses overgrown with grass;
• in basements;
• in warehouses of agricultural products;
• along roadsides;
• in wastelands and abandoned stadiums;
• in the private sector;
• in parks and recreational areas;
• in landfills.

Here, wood lice huddle under stones, various large objects, under mowed grass and in garbage. In such places, they are fed by any decaying plant remains - the same mowed grass, rotting fruits and vegetables, plant roots. Woodlice feed mainly at night, occasionally leaving their shelters during the day or at dusk.

On a note

The most common for the cities of central Russia are two types of woodlice - the common woodlouse-armadillo and the woodlouse rough. The first is best known for its characteristic appearance: it is she who is most often called the "watermelon". The second is more mobile, less likely to curl up into a ball and relies mainly on its speed. It is the rough woodlouse that most often turns out to be an unwanted guest in the apartment.

 

Is it possible to bring wood lice into the house ourselves?

As a rule, wood lice penetrate the premises on their own, making their way from their usual habitats to more comfortable conditions for them. These arthropods try to stay away from sources of light, vibration and noise, and therefore they almost never appear on clothes or in personal items. That is why the probability of bringing wood lice into the apartment yourself is very small.

In very rare cases, wood lice can be brought into the house with purchased products - potatoes in bags and nets, carrots and onions, fruits in boxes. But in this case, you should not be afraid of guests - they are unlikely to take root in an apartment that they did not make their way into.

Truly undesirable in a person’s apartment are only those wood lice that are taken from basements and from the street and move to wet rooms themselves. It is they who tend to not only settle for permanent residence in the apartment, but also actively breed here.

In this case, wood lice are a sign that the apartment has areas with poorly adjusted ventilation and constant dampness. Such places need to be found as soon as possible and brought to a normal state in order to avoid problems more serious than the presence of wood lice (for example, the constant presence of mold, which will poison all the air in the apartment with its spores).

 

Favorite habitats of wood lice in the apartment

In the vast majority of cases, wood lice are found in apartments in the following places:

• in bathrooms, especially under the baths themselves - it is constantly humid here and there is usually the smallest microflora sufficient for nutrition;
• in toilets behind toilets and boilers;
• on balconies and attached loggias bordering directly on the basement;
• in pantries and closets used to store vegetables and fruits.

If wood lice are found in one room, they should definitely be looked for in other rooms and outbuildings - perhaps where they are most, they are least noticeable. Be sure to inspect ventilation ducts for this purpose.

In general, wood lice usually settle where humidity exceeds sanitary standards for residential premises. These crustaceans are a good indicator of the presence of constant water leaks, pipe breaks, and stagnant sewers.

If wood lice were found anywhere in the apartment, you should look for places where the water supply and sewerage system, insulation on the walls, plaster and the integrity of the walls themselves can be broken. Once such damage is discovered, it must be repaired as soon as possible. It makes sense to deal with the direct destruction of wood lice only when conditions favorable for their living are completely excluded.

 

Interesting video: the invasion of wood lice from gardens to private houses in Sochi

 

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