Getting rid of rats/mice (merged threads)

Little_Joe

I heard mice walking in my loft. I wanted to deal with it buy my wife was freaking out and as a result called this firm (I live outside Leeds). Their guy turned up and placed a few bags of poison down.He returned a week later believinh they would be gone by then; but we could still hear the mice. I paid £150 and the firm wanted another £60 to continue with the treatment! I then found out the local council charges £90 (with a few visits over a few weeks). So maybe this is a better option as I feel I wasted my money with no result. The most important issue is (besides poisoning the rodents) to block the entry points to your property; eg placing fine wire mesh over air bricks, wire wool around pipes and cables leading to loft, filling holes around property walls etc. Remember a .ose can get in through a pencil size hole.

GustyGardenGalaxy

A better alternative is to invest in some electronic rat/mouse zappers (for example: https://www.screwfix.com/p/pest-stop-electronic-rodent-killer/76836). They kill the rodent quickly and humanely, unlike poison which causes a few days of suffering for the rodent (ever see one die from poison? I have, it's not at all nice). Also, a rodent that's dying from poison can crawl away to die in your wall space, so resulting in a bad smell in your house and perhaps even maggots or flies creeping into your living area from the smallest of cracks.

JustAnotherSaver

A few weeks ago i was in the living room. I actually started walking across it & i heard what at first i thought was perhaps rubble falling underneath the floorboards. I wasn't 100% sure as i also did wonder about maybe mice scratting in & about the skirting or certainly near it.

We have a suspended timber floor & the subfloor is damp since we have a sump pump installed.

Anyway after it stopped i heard absolutely nothing until my wife contacted me tonight to say she heard something running in the walls. She personally thought it sounded too big to be a mouse size & instead thought rat.

There's some sort of cavity beam thing in the ceiling of the kitchen which this thing was running backwards & forwards in. She said it went on for maybe 5mins & then stopped.

There's a cavity where the stop tap is with pipe work running to the boiler upstairs & from this it possibly does connect in to that beam. I mean, they meet but whether you could access the beam from that cavity i don't know.

There's been no signs of them having actually been in any of the rooms but obviously this thing can climb well enough, assuming it's only 1.


Anyone reading this had issue with rats inside the house before? How did you get rid?

My mother had problems with rats although outside her house. She has some blue block like rat bait which she's given me to try out. Really weary of it chewing through pipe work or cables :-/

gamston

I put traps down to get the mice in my loft, I've also used those electronic mice/rats scarers they worked

JustAnotherSaver

gamston wrote: »

I've also used those electronic mice/rats scarers they worked

I'd be interested in what others reading this experienced with those things.

As my mother had them at her house but finds they don't do anything.

elsien

Not rats, but had mice that were using the pipes to move round the house.

pramsay13

We have a cat

JustAnotherSaver

pramsay13 wrote: »

We have a cat

We have porridge.

Who's turn is it next?

Dollymix12

I have rats getting under my floor and I am just about at my limit with it, does anyone have any advice??

A little back ground, we moved into our house in April last year and not long after we started to hear noises in the loft of our one story extension. Pest control came out, confirmed rats and started putting poison down, apparently it’s not a new issue and all the evidence points to it being an ongoing issue before we moved in.

Since then we have had a couple of pest control firms come out but they all basically do the same thing traps/poison but no actual real advice on what we need to do next. Every month or so we have the most disgusting smell as one must have died out of reach and the traps are hit and miss but so far we have caught around 15 this way!

A few weeks ago the noise changed and I actually felt one bump the floor under my foot, I was gutted as we had found a hole in the exterior wall near the loft and hoped this was where they were getting in. We pulled all the laminate floor up in one of the rooms got the floor boards up and the stench was unbelievable, there was so many droppings! We cleared it all up, put traps down and caught 4 in the first week.

The problem now is we seem to have driven them to the part of the extension that’s under the kitchen (also laminate) and have tonight heard them in the dividing wall!! I’m going to get some poison blocks to nail down but really trying to avoid pulling the floors up in the other 2 extension rooms.

They are not getting into the house itself so I have no idea what they are eating!!

Old_Git

was your extension built over sewer pipe ,if so it may have broken.