Drain Fly Clean Out in Brick, NJ restaurant

This particular job demonstrated one of our key pest control services in action — our fly defense program that we offer to our commercial clients. While fly control is critical for any business, for those who operate commercial kitchens in restaurants and other sanitation-sensitive facilities like nursing homes, it is essential. Keeping fly populations under control can be daunting. These infestations don’t self-resolve and just continue to get worse over time. Fortunately, with our fly control program, we can help restaurants and other businesses control the toughest fly problems. 

There are plenty of reasons why fly infestations are difficult to resolve. For starters, even for insects, flies have unusually fast reproductive rates. A single female can lay hundreds of eggs at once, and almost one thousand eggs during her lifetime. These eggs, which look like small grains of rice, are extremely difficult to locate. Once deposited, it only takes a day for fly eggs to hatch into maggots (fly larvae). The larvae feed for close to a week and then enter a pupal stage where the maggots transform into a flies. And thereafter, there is an ever-expanding cycle. Also, although we prefer to not think about it, but flies are a sanitation nightmare. Like cockroaches, these insects live and breed in rotting food debris and outright filth, and leave behind a trail of bacteria like E. coli and other pathogens on countertops and wherever else land. 

With fly control, the number one objective is finding all of the potential breeding grounds and eliminating them. There are important ways to keep down fly populations and monitor fly activity like Insect Light Traps (ILTs) and ensuring that all the screen windows are in good shape and the restaurant staff knows to keep outside doors closed, but the key is proper sanitation. This particular restaurant in Brick, NJ, had a troublesome fly infestation. The restaurant manager could not understand why since everything was visibly free of food debris and everything looked neat and tidy. With flies, however, it’s often what’s hidden that’s the problem. I inspected the floor drains, which are often fly breeding grounds. Left uncleaned, floor drains soon become an ideal fly-breeding environment. Food and debris that builds up in the drain soon turns into decaying organic matter. This gunk coating the drain pipes is the life source of drain flies and fruit flies. This fermenting layer of material is all they need to breed and thrive. 

Removing the drain grate, I applied an ample amount of a bio-cleaning foaming agent that dissolves the organic material, and I used a drain brush to manually remove the sticky build-up. I also thoroughly cleaned the grate itself, top and bottom, making sure all of the openings were clear of residue and grime. With the floor drains cleaned, fly populations in this restaurant will be knocked-down quickly. An effective fly control program involves periodic inspections to identify fly breeding grounds and trouble spots in and outside of the kitchen (like dumpster areas) and correcting those sanitation deficiencies that lead to fly and other pest infestations.