Hoards of houseflies! Help!

[stephienoodle]

We have a TERRIBLE housefly problem. We were just gone for 24 hours and nobody went in or out of the house while we were gone. It was closed the entire time. When I came back, I had what I'd guess to be around 100 flies buzzing primarily around the window for our back door and the two windows in the kitchen. Now that I've waged war with a flyswatter in the kitchen, I have come to beg for help.

Is there anything that I can do to deter them? We've got flypaper on the wall near the back door, but it doesn't seem to attract them enough for any reasonable amount of effectiveness.

I can't find any place that they are breeding in the house, but where all should I look? What odd places (you know, places other than doors/windows) should I be seeing if they are getting in? Our trash can is in a closed cabinet. Our "rags to be washed" are in a trashcan with a fairly tight lid. I'm not always on top of dirt dishes, but I try. The cats eat at night and then their bowl gets washed the following morning. What else can I do?

We're going to try to put our house on the market sometime in the near future, but NOBODY is going to want to buy a house overrun with houseflies!

[zoebird]

when we lived in our condo, it was on a concrete slab.

when it was a rainy summer, the flies would lay their eggs on the slab, and they would come up into the house somehow that way. when it was dry, the eggs were still laid there, but the flies would not come into the house (avoiding the water) but fly away.

some summers, i would have 20-30 flies in the house each day or two for a couple of weeks, then a break, and then when the rain came it would happen again. and other summers, we would have no flies.

i don't know if that helps at all. but yeah, it was crazy. adn they were BIG flies and no, i didn't have yuckiness around.

[yeahwhat]

Could they be cluster flies? They get in around windows and lay eggs in the walls. It's not about having ickiness around and cleaning the house top to bottom won't find the maggots.

[sunshineafterrain]

I had a problem with flies last year, could not figure out where they were coming from, finally did

In our case, it was from the dustbuster
I had used the handheld vacuum to clean up after the kids ate, and vacuumed up food and the rest is history... it took a while to figure that out but have not had a problem since- and that vac is in the garage now so I will never use it again LOL

[gmvh]

We've had that happen, too. I taped fly paper to a pendant light and left the light on at night. That seemed to draw them to the area and they got got. The other thing I had success with is leaving the windows open and they'd congregate on the screens. They were super easy to swat on the screens - I don't think they can feel the air from the swatter coming at them when they're on the screen. Good luck, it's frustrating!