These tiny pests can cause damage to woollen carpets and they do it in places where you can’t notice them - right under the furniture. This is exactly what happened to our previous flat, but luckily the damage was minimal. Still it is a damage. The question is - how liable tenants are when it comes to a damage that was impossible to detect? Obviously visible moths were killed and certain locations they were spotted in were treated but not all of them as it turned out when we started to prepare to move out and some static furniture was moved and damage was discovered.
There is a good chance that you brought the moths with you when yoh moved from your other place. The eggs are tiny and stick to clothes. We have them in our home now and have been trying to get rid of them for over a year without success. Try the smoke bombs. Theyre quite good.
@David122 makes sense, but we didn’t have any of them at our previous address and we are sure about that. Thanks for the advice, my question is mostly around how much responsibility tenants should take in case when damage was not visible (under furniture moth) while measures had been taken to minimise it (i.e. reasonable measures were taken to treat places were moth was spotted so none can be accused of negligence).
Yes, the damage is often minimal. Its more the cost and time to get rid of them. Do you think they were present when you moved in?
I don’t know to be honest. They might come later, we started noticing them a year or so after the beginning of our tenancy but they were quite stealth and hard to spot.
Its hard to know which way the deposit scheme or a court would decide if you and the landlord get into a dispute about it. Normally infestations that arise after a tenancy begins are the tenants responsibility unless they are caused by a structural defect. It may be hard to prove when and how they arose. You might perhaps offer to pay something toward the costs on the basis that the landlord makes a contribution too.
I think you’ve answered your own question. If the damage is impossible to detect then legally they can’t be liable can they? They weren’t negligent unless the place was swarming with moths and they didn’t report it to you. Unless you had specific clauses asking them to regularly move furniture to check, i don’t see how they did anything wrong.
I had them in a rental. Took the tenant a few months to report them because she saw the odd moth but thought they were coming in through the open windows. Finally realised in winter that wasn’t the case. By then i had a 6 inch hole under a desk. I’d been there for several days in the summer and noticed nothing. Hard to say she did anything wrong. Hand held spray on the carpet (and her clothes) sorted it.
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