How to keep rats and mice out of the house

A mouse can use a hole quarter inch wide and a full-size rat only needs a half inch hole to enter your home. They’re mostly fluff and blubber so as long as they can fit their skull through they can easily squeeze the rest through. These holes can be just about anywhere so you have to take the time to look but they do have their preferred areas. If they have enough food mice can live in an area as small as five feet. Rats tend to venture much further than that around 100 feet but once they’re established, they like to use the same paths and same areas. Both rats and mice leave clues as to where they have been. The first clue is pretty gross, rats and mice don’t stop to defecate or urinate like most animals do, they just kind of leak out whenever they’re full so you can follow urine trails and rodent droppings along the places where they’ve been. You can also lightly sprinkle baby powder on the floor overnight and follow the footprints they leave. Rats especially are pretty greasy so since they like to use the same paths, they leave rub marks on the walls. There will be greasy smears where they’ve rubbed their body against things. It is very similar to the discoloration around light switches if you’ve never cleaned them from the oils on our hands.

Rats can chew through up to steel so your wall is no match for their chompers. They tend to chew bigger holes where there already was a small hole or a gap like around pipes and wires where they come through the walls. Builders know these areas are out of sight and out of mind for the homeowners, so they never bother to seal them up. Even the silver ring around the hot and the cold pipes under the sink, the shower head, and behind the toilet doesn’t seal these gaps. I call these “Plumbers Cheat Rings” it allows them to not have to make a pretty hole. They just cut it, throw a pipe through, and the ring will cover up any sins. Pull that ring back and caulk the actual gap around the pipe. Sometimes the one behind the toilet can’t be pulled back because there’s not enough room. In that case push it flush with the wall and caulk around it.

Another favorite entry point is around the 220v for the stove. Again the electricians, like the plumbers, know you are going to put a stove there so they don’t seal it or put a baseboard there. Heck, about half the people I talk to have never pulled their stove out.  DB Cooper’s money could be back there and you wouldn’t even know it. Just a little crack is enough for them to chew your quintessential cartoon mouse hole and start stealing your Cheerios. Depending on the material they’re chewing on you can even see the individual teeth marks.

All these indicators help us find exactly what they’ve been up to. They tell on themselves if you pay attention to the clues. Let’s move to the outside. Some of the common entry points are the pipes and wires of the AC unit, around other pipes and wires, crawl doors that don’t seal, and crawl vents that are damaged or chewed through. Once they are in the crawl space there are many entry points that they can crawl up like under tubs and showers. They are great climbers; I’ve seen them scale a wall floor to ceiling. No garage door seals correctly so they can easily squeeze under the corners at the edges. You might as well consider the garage an outside area. That means sealing the pipes and wires inside the garage is important as well as under the sinks, the drop sinks, and your water heater because those go directly into the house. If you can see light around your door when it’s closed it needs new weather stripping. It wears out and needs to be replaced periodically, that’s normal.

Also consider utility lines, remember they’re great climbers. The trees touching the house or even just overhanging are an easy way for pests to access the house just cut them back okay so what do you do about all this mess? It really is as simple as sealing up the holes. It’s not that hard but you must put in the time. Silicone caulk is what I recommend for most holes and gaps. It is designed to expand and contract with heat and humidity changes like you would obviously have in a kitchen or bathroom or outside. You can also get it clear so if your caulking is not as pretty as you would like, it doesn’t show up as easily and you don’t have to worry about color or painting. If you use a piece of cardboard, you can smooth the caulk and make it look better. For the larger holes and ones that don’t have to be pretty you can use expanding foam. Be careful as both of these materials can be messy but especially the expanding foam. Most people put way too much out and that can actually be detrimental as well. That’s why it is best to shave off any excess after it cures because as it expands it leaves small holes you can’t see until you do that. With rodents, even though they can chew through up to steel, if they can’t smell through it then they almost always leave it alone. If they do chew it out again, it will be obvious, and you know you need to do something more robust like wood or metal. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how you accomplish the exclusion as far as rats and mice go as long as it is done. That is just as, if not more important than any baiting, killing, or trapping.  I usually recommend you to do the exclusion work yourself, it’s cheap and easy. We can do the exclusion for you for a price or if it’s more complicated we can call United Home Services for that professional touch.

Exclusion is paramount in your fight against pests, not just rats and mice, but all bugs and water and air for your AC. It can affect all that too there will always be pests outside. We can treat them. We can kill them. And we can prevent them, but anytime you have a pest inside the house, the pest is not the problem, it is an effect of the real problem. The real problem is the hole they entered through, the mess that you left out that attracted them, or the Landscaping that attracted them. Fix the real problem for less pests.

You wanna know what bugs me?

Holes of the house letting mice and rats in. Seal them up. Just seal them up and anything you got left, I’d love to love to kill it