Liverpool - Rats in the roof!

claf

I live in a mid terrace and recently I have heard a lot of scrabbling from my kitchen / bathroom roof, an flat-roof extension with nothing above. I called out the council pest controllers and they checked the roof for entry points and could find none, so they did a smoke test and put a camera down the drains and decided that there was a hole in the waste pipe, which is where it must be entering. A lot of money later, I have called out a plumber who did another CCTV check and found no hole - in fact he showed me an action replay of the whole of our sewer / pipe system and it all looks pristine.

I have arranged another appointment with the council but they are hugely non-committal and seemed resigned that nothing can be done.

Any ideas? I can't set traps as there are no visible entry points at all. The council did put some poison down the sewer hatch but I can still hear the damn thing, so am sure that hasn't solved the problem. I don't hear the scrabbling all the time, maybe 3-4 times a week and usually in the evening / morning.

If anyone has any pearls of wisdom to share, they would be most gratefully received. Thanks!

Savvy_Sue

Is it possible it's something on top of the roof? Rather than actually 'in' it, IYSWIM.

Also do you have squirrels locally? they are noisy blighters.

DitaBombita

My friend just had the same problem - she looked it up and its `attic rats` they live and nest in the insulation. She heard them early morning .... 4am kind of thing. She asked neighbours and they said they had same thing as attics joined. They had to pay for the rat man to come out and he laid poison that took a week to work - the noise has gone but she hasnt reported back corpse finds as yet. Good luck - I think she found info on google.

mikey72

We get birds, mice, frogs, anything that moves appears to like our roof and garage. I thought everyone had them.
The birds use the loft insulation for nesting, the mice just eat anything they can find, then run round the cavity walls at night. I think the frogs are just cold.
We have had poison out, for the mice, it usually gets rid of them for the season.

zorber

you appear to have a similar issue to us, we live midterrace too. what we have had is rats that get into the wall caverty between the houses and you hear them moving up and down the walls.
Now we checked and also had the council out and they couldnt find any entry points but found one in the neighbours house below the electric meter.
Took a while to get them the hole filled in.
In the mean time we put traps and bate in the roof which encouraged the rats into the roof space though they didnt seem to like venturing over the insulation, i got a couple before the hole was filled in and next door also caught one humainly. We didnt hear any thing for a year and then yesterday we heard one. Problem now is we have both had loft conversions so can no longer access the caverty space. i have external bait traps wut it looks like they are entering through the neighbours house again. Not sure what to do but may put bait traps down when they arnt in as they are a funny bunch and dont like poison.

i also deployed a sonic deterant not sure how effective it was but need to get it out again.

good luck as the noise of the rats drives me bonkers

chalkysoil

we had rats in the loft for years. Council pest man came every fortnight, neighbours probably thought there was something going on.. When the bait worked they died in the cavities/under the floorboards and it STUNK for days, it's horrible. Bought a plug in gadget (£65) that is a sonic thingy but also it magnetises ( or something technical) the electric wiring and the rats hate it. It works for us. But one rat got in last year and we set a a manual rat trap, ( peanut butter and jam on bread) Clean kill in an accessible place. The rat access point was just above the guttering - it had chewed a hole under the roof tile.
I don't put food out for the birds anymore -at least nowhere near the house, saw rats eating bits of peanut that had fallen out of the bird feeder to the ground. Don't keep compost maker near the house anymore either - had a tumbling one and rats chewed through it to get the stuff inside