Fumigation across Cape Town

True gas fumigation is the right call for infested furniture, antiques and timber where wood borer larvae are tunnelling inside the wood. It is also used for stored products like grain, maize meal, animal feed and dried goods when weevils or moths have got into bulk stock. Shipping containers and pallets heading to or arriving from the harbour sometimes need treating too. Most homeowners who phone asking for fumigation, though, have cockroaches, fleas or bed bugs, and those are better handled with a targeted spray, gel or dust treatment than with gas. We will tell you honestly which camp your problem falls into.

Fumigation, fogging or spraying: which one do you mean?

Three words get mixed up on almost every call we take. Here is how we use them, so you can describe your problem in the same language we do.

• Fumigation is a gas treatment inside a sealed space: under a gas-proof sheet, in a sealed room or in a container. The gas moves into solid timber and packed stock.
• Fogging puts a very fine mist into the air of a room or roof void. It settles on surfaces and drifts into gaps, but it does not soak into a beam or a bag of maize.
• Spraying puts a residual product onto the surfaces insects walk over, such as skirtings, cracks and wall voids, and keeps working for weeks afterwards.

A simple rule of thumb: if the pest lives out in the open, on surfaces or in the kitchen, it is almost never a gas job. If it lives inside something, it might be.

Four questions we ask before planning a fumigation

1. Can the infested item be moved? A dining chair or an old kist can be sealed on its own. Built-in cupboards, floors and roof timbers cannot, and that changes the whole plan.
2. What else is in the space? Food, medicines, seed, aquariums and pot plants all have to come out or be protected. A storeroom with mixed stock takes far longer to prepare than an empty one.
3. Who shares the walls? In a sectional title block or a semi-detached house, a gas treatment needs a seal that protects the neighbours as well, and the body corporate needs to know about it. Sometimes that alone makes another method the sensible choice.
4. Is there a deadline? A load due at the harbour, a property transfer or a tenant moving in all affect timing, so tell us the date at the start.

How fumigation jobs differ across Cape Town

Southern Suburbs and Constantia

Older family homes here are full of inherited furniture: yellowwood and stinkwood pieces, imported oak, chests that have moved house three or four times. A lot of our single-item fumigations start in these dining rooms, usually after someone notices a small heap of dust under a table leg. There are local notes on our Constantia fumigation page.

Northern Suburbs industrial areas

In Montague Gardens, Epping and the business parks around Brackenfell, the work is mostly about stock: packaged food, animal feed, pallets and the odd container. Planning revolves around trading hours, how fast a bay can be cleared and where the treated load is going next. See fumigation in Montague Gardens for that side of things.

Boland farms and smallholdings

Feed rooms, grain bins and seed stores on farms are classic fumigation territory. Inland summers are hotter than on the coast, and feed bought in bulk to last through harvest sits around long enough for a small problem to spread right through it.

Atlantic Seaboard and False Bay coast

Holiday homes that stand closed for months are where problems run unnoticed. Opening up for the season and finding fine powder on the floor beside a wardrobe or a bed base is a call we know well.

Mistakes that undo a good fumigation

• Treating one piece of furniture and putting it straight back beside another infested piece. If one item has active borer, have its neighbours checked before it comes home.
• Polishing or waxing furniture before the inspection. Wax fills fresh holes and hides the dust we use to judge whether larvae are still feeding.
• Fumigating a few bags of feed while the rest of the storeroom carries on as before. The gas only deals with what is under the sheet.
• Expecting old holes to vanish. Exit holes stay after treatment, so fill or mark them afterwards. That way any new hole stands out straight away.

Most of what people call fumigation turns out to be a wood borer or crawling insect job that needs no gas at all. Send us a photo on WhatsApp or phone 021 012 5825 and we will tell you which kind of job you have before anyone quotes for sheeting.

Quick answers

Fumigation by suburb