Ants are the pest where careful DIY most often succeeds. Four steps, done properly, and you may not need to call anyone.
Follow the trail to the entry point, remove the food, clean the whole trail, and seal the route.
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 food and a nest. That line leads to exactly where they enter.
Ants come in for sweet or greasy food. Cut the supply and the trail loses its purpose:
Now clean it, in a way that removes the chemical trail rather than just the visible ants.
Hot soapy water works. Dilute vinegar works. What matters is doing the whole route — including up the wall, along the skirting and into the cupboard — not just the stretch across the worktop.
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 Wealdstone →If you do one thing from this page, do this. A properly sealed entry is the difference between one summer of ants and every summer of ants.
In a flat, the limit is what you own. If the trail comes from a communal riser or a shared cavity, sealing your side helps but the colony is somebody else's to address — tell the managing agent.
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. Place them directly on the trail rather than tucked in a corner, and leave them alone.
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.
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. An established route into a kitchen usually will not.
Useful to know where it is, not necessary to destroy it yourself.
Wasps as well? That one has a fixed published price too — £90 in Wealdstone, guaranteed.
Follow the trail to the entry point, remove the food, clean the whole trail, and seal the route.
The chemical trail persists elsewhere on the route and the colony still knows the food is there. Clean the whole route.
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.
The sticky ring under jars and bottles in the cupboard.
Seal your side, and tell the managing agent — the colony may be in a communal riser or cavity.
It rarely reaches deep enough, and it is not an option at all in a flat.
When the trail returns within days despite cleaning, when there are multiple entry points, or when you are on an upper floor and the route is inside the building.
Tell us where they enter and which floor you are on. If it sounds like a job you can finish yourself, we will say so.
Prefer to talk? Call 0203 151 6640 or WhatsApp us.
