Genius window trick to get flies out of your house in hot weather every time
As the weather hots up, the windows and doors are open and it doesn't take long before the telltale buzz of an annoying fly is flitting around your house.
It's summer, it's hot, and you've probably got your windows wide open trying to keep cool (even though it doesn't always work).
But the balmy and carefree days of summer bring with them an unwelcome guest, with an endless buzz and annoying zig zag presence: flies.
Flies and bluebottle flies in particular darting around your home can be a constant annoyance. With windows and doors flung open, these pesky intruders seem to find their way in but frustratingly bash against the glass, unable to comprehend the invisible barrier ahead of them.
Despite your efforts to shoo them out into the freedom they seem to ignore, they stubbornly linger, buzzing fruitlessly against a windowpane with a wide open window right above or below them.
But experts have shared a genius trick to rid your home of flies, wasps, bees and other winged insects based on air currents.
Flies and other insects which, um, fly, navigate using air currents to help them get around. Although not really perceptible to us, an air current flowing in through an open window may seem like a gale force wind to a little fly.
Flies typically enter your house riding the breeze, conserving energy by going with the airflow. But once inside, an open window doesn't signal an escape route to them, in fact it can appear as a daunting gust they're reluctant to brave.
A savvy Redditor, U/Paolog, explains: "Air flow has a lot to do with it. Imagine you are in a river - it's much easier to be carried downstream than it is to swim upstream."
The best way, then, to encourage them to go is by opening another window on the opposite side of your house. Essentially, they will go out in the same direction they came in, but will rarely fly back against the current.
He added: "The b****d fly may have been blown in through that tiny gap. Opening the window wider only makes more air blow in, and the fly doesn't stand a chance against it.
"If you can, open a window on the opposite side of the room or house so that the air flow will blow it out again. If there's no incoming breeze, create an outgoing one by flapping a commemorative Coronation tea towel."
So it turns out, the best way is to open a window or door on the opposite side of your house to where the fly came in, and then if necessary, create a little breeze to usher it back out.
Don't kill them, of course: flies and wasps - as well as butterflies and bees - are key pollinators, and insect numbers are down by as much as 60 percent in the past decade. If they die off, we die off, because nothing will grow without them.
