Do You Have Drain Flies? Here’s What You Can Do About Them
Spotting tiny, fuzzy flying insects in your kitchen or bathrooms isn’t pleasant. These are “drain flies,” which live in damp environments, such as down in the drainpipes of your bathroom and kitchen sinks. They don’t bite, so they pose no health hazard to you or your family. Nonetheless, you don’t want them around, and not just because they’re unattractive. The presence of drain flies may mean you’ve got troubles in the plumbing that need to be addressed.
Find out where the flies are coming from
The first step in taking care of drain flies is to determine which drains in your house have them, and this isn’t always obvious. You can do a basic test on the drains to find if there are drain flies coming from them. Take a piece of sticky tape, such as clear packing tape, and place it over the drains you suspect may be problems. Do this in the evening to take advantage of a time when drain flies are most active. Check the next day to see if there are flies stuck to the tape. You may need to do this a few days in a row because of the length of the breeding cycle of fly eggs. Eventually, you’ll find which drains are the source of the drain flies.
Removing drain flies
At this point, we know it’s tempting to grab drain cleaner and pour it down the drain to kill the little buggers. Please don’t do this. Although it may kill the flies, it can also cause damage to the drainpipe, and the acidic chemicals from the drain cleaner are much more dangerous to you than drain flies!
There are some basic remedies, such as pouring boiling water down the drain. You can also make a mixture of vinegar and baking soda and pour it down the drain, followed by boiling water. There are other remedies you may hear about, such a setting a trap of a bowl of sugar water outside the drain to attract the flies. But this doesn’t address the root of the issue, which is eliminating the source of the eggs.
What you need most of all to get rid of drain flies for good is to remove the organic build-up inside the drain that allows the flies to breed. The best way to do this is to have a professional plumber assist you. Plumbers use special drain cleaning methods such as drain augers and hydro-jetters that thoroughly remove the source of the build-up. Not only does this get rid of the drain flies, it makes it difficult for them to return.
Bigger issues
Drain flies might be coming from sewage backup inside the pipes. If you smell foul sewer odors from your drains along with seeing drain flies, you may have a major problem with a clogged or even broken sewer line to the house. This is one reason we recommend calling for professional plumbers to help with drain flies: the plumbers can determine if there are larger issues at the root of the problem and have them fixed before you end up with sewage backing up into the house.
Our expert plumbers in Surprise, AZ can help you deal with any type of drain problems you have, from drain flies to replacing sewer lines.
The Trusted Plumber serves Glendale, AZ and the surrounding areas. Call us for plumbing help—we have emergency service available.
This post first appeared on https://www.thetrustedplumber.com
