Woodworm Treatment & Insect Control Across
Blackburn & Lancashire

Look for fresh "frass", which is a fine, cream-coloured wood dust that looks like flour sitting beneath the timber or around the rim of the holes. If the inside of the 1mm to 2mm exit holes looks pale and clean rather than dark, grey, and dusty, beetles have recently emerged. We test the timber directly on site and inspect joist ends and sub-floor areas to confirm whether you have live larvae actively boring inside the wood.

All timber surfaces need to be clean, bare, and accessible so the liquid insecticide can penetrate the wood grain properly. In living areas, carpets, underlay, and vinyl must be pulled back, and thick dust or dirt vacuumed off the floorboards. In lofts, boarding and stored possessions must be shifted out of the work zone, and fibreglass insulation rolled back so we can coat the tops and sides of the ceiling joists and rafters.

Water-based insecticide sprays cannot soak into timber through non-porous coatings like paint, heavy varnish, or floor sealers. If floorboards or decorative beams have been sealed, the finish has to be sanded back to raw wood, or we have to use deep-injection gels placed directly into beetle flight holes. In many homes, we can work around finished flooring by getting into the crawl space underneath to spray the unpainted joists and the underside of the floorboards directly.

We apply a professional, targeted insecticide using low-pressure sprayers directly onto the bare wood. The fluid binds to the outer layer of timber, killing larvae as they eat through the treated boundary to emerge as adult beetles, while also preventing newly hatched grubs from burrowing inside. People and pets simply need to stay out of the treated area until the fluid is completely dry, which normally takes between two and four hours.

Common Furniture Beetles leave small pinhead-sized holes and attack typical pine floorboards, rafters, and joists found across most Lancashire housing. Deathwatch Beetles are larger, leave 3mm holes, and usually target damp, decaying hardwoods like old oak beams and wall plates in rural stone properties and barn conversions. Deathwatch larvae tunnel much deeper into structural heartwood, which means treatments often require concentrated timber paste injections alongside solving the underlying damp source.

Most infestations are caught early enough that the timber retains its structural strength, meaning insecticidal treatment alone will stop the problem without any structural work. We test suspect wood with an awl to assess how deep the tunnels go and whether the core remains solid. Timbers only need splicing, sistering, or replacing if long-term beetle activity combined with damp has softened the wood and ruined its load-bearing capability.