Blocking holes from pests

Johnny_Tightlips

Recently we've had a small problem of the rodent variety in our house. Luckily it appears to be a solitary creature and it should be gone from our house by the end of today (fingers crossed), but once its gone the next step will be finding its access point and blocking it off to prevent any other rodents from coming in. We live in an old cottage so I've identified 3 categories of holes around the house that need blocking-

1) A hole in our dining room wall, near the gas fire.
2) Hole or holes in the eaves, which will need blocking from the outside due to access difficulty inside.
3) Holes in the floorboards upstairs. Once the outside holes in the house are blocked technically blocking these doesn't matter, but I'd like to block them anyway. Effectively, these holes are where the floorboards don't quite meet the skirting board, leaving gaps that are long and thin, and are presently effectively only covered by the edge of the carpet.

I've read that a mixture of wire wool (copper ideally, but failing that steel) mixed with something to seal the hole, i.e sealant, caulking, filler etc, is the best way to pest-proof these holes, but I'm wondering what type of seal would be best for these situations? In my mind, something like filler (being quite thick) would be difficult to integrate with the wool, so I'm wondering if expanding foam would do the trick?

The other question then would be what would be suitable for using to seal the "gaps" in the upstairs floor, bearing in mind that the main gap that need filling has a radiator pipe running the length of it (so as you're looking at the floor you have floorboard -> pipe -> 1/2 inch gap -> skirting board)?

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!

cyclonebri1

Amateur but personal advice;

Use sand and cement with chicken wire mesh included for any large access pointed, any foams etc will simply be chewed up.

Given that, protect any new mortar for a couple of weeks as they will still try to chew it out untill hardened fully.

Keep them at bay from the outside and kill the blighters from the inside, traps and poison, in my view of course;)

As I think you realise mice and rats will easily scale a 2 or 3 storie building, they can run up brick walls. The other point is to find out what is so attractive to them in your home ????????????????

zaax

Don't use poison in doors, will take years for the smell to go away

camelot1001

Having just moved from an old and very rural property I would advise you to avoid using expanding foam. When we first moved there we filled gaps in the floor with the stuff as a quick fix. The noise at night of the little blighters chomping away was extremely annoying!!

The ones that were poisoned and obviously died inside did smell but it only lasted a couple of days - smelly candles did the trick!

Good luck.

cyclonebri1

zaax wrote: »

Don't use poison in doors, will take years for the smell to go away

Why would you put poison in doors:D:D.

Ok, I know what you mean but for the loft issue it's perfectly fine.

Camelot, a relative of mine has polystyrene cavity wall insulation, they absolutely love that stuff.

Just going slightly off topic, I picked up a new electric built in cooker for someone once, scratch and dent place so luckily fairly cheap.
Left it with him.
2 months later I got a call asking me to come down. He'd put the oven in the garage while having the kitchen re-done, and yes he's got a mouse problem around the building. I didn't see it as it had been fitted but the mice had chewed through the insulation in the rear. Being a tight apse he decided the damage wasn't too bad so had it fitted. Big mistake, they had nested in there and had chewed through half the wiring.
The only thing that worked was the main oven and when that was turned on the stink of fired mice and urine was unbearable, the sparky gagged evidently.

New oven in skip, and stinking house for a 2 weeks. Just a tale of caution.

Rodney_Trotter

cyclonebri1 wrote: »

Amateur but personal advice;

Use sand and cement with chicken wire mesh included for any large access pointed, any foams etc will simply be chewed up.

Given that, protect any new mortar for a couple of weeks as they will still try to chew it out untill hardened fully.

Keep them at bay from the outside and kill the blighters from the inside, traps and poison, in my view of course;)

As I think you realise mice and rats will easily scale a 2 or 3 storie building, they can run up brick walls. The other point is to find out what is so attractive to them in your home ????????????????

Does it matter whether the poison is in view or not?

They will eat it, go back to the nest and die.

DRP

zaax wrote: »

Don't use poison in doors, will take years for the smell to go away

When we had a mouse the pest guy from the council put down poisoned seed. He told us part of the effect of the poison was to make the mice dehydrated so the y naturally exited the property to find water and then died outside :A

Not sure of the truth of it , but the mouse disappeared and we never had smells and never found the corpse !

cyclonebri1

Rodney_Trotter wrote: »

Does it matter whether the poison is in view or not?

They will eat it, go back to the nest and die.

I thought that was the idea.;)

I'm not an expert but do mice breed at this time of year, I keep animal feeds and fish pellets etc in my garage, I only ever catch the odd full grown mouse in winter.

A relative keeps birds in outside aviaries, he reports no small fry in winter, (he notices as young mice can squeeze through 1" x 1/2" mesh, the adults can't.)