One common theme we’ve seen over the years is the insistence of customers to refer back our findings to a builder and ask for their thoughts and opinions on it all.
Often we hear ‘my builder is a civil engineer’ or ‘my builder used to work for the Earl of Sussex’ etc. and the typical consensus is that these individuals are the trusted go-to authorities on all things to do with buildings (and indeed politics, climate change and relationship advice too!).
Over endless cups of tea, these perceived ‘pillars of society’ have clearly invoked the trust of various homeowners through various plausible explanations of what lime mortar is, why there’s damp in that corner and how to mix the perfect plaster batch for skimming.
So they would know all there is about rats too right?
Sometimes we find these challenges to our expertise in this very niche area frustrating as, from our perspective, nearly always the root cause of any given rat problem is something a builder hasn’t done or done correctly.
We therefore think it’s perhaps not the best idea to get them involved to fix these issues as there’s a good chance they’ll introduce further issues in doing so!
I personally know some very skilled and knowledgeable builders myself (and have learned from these people too) but understandably the vast majority don’t have much experience with rats and aren’t aware of their behaviour and capability.
They may well understand how they built an extension and what was involved with adapting the drainage but they won’t understand how rats will look to capitalize any weak spots introduced such as badly capped inlets, anything made of plastic/rubber and any gaps/holes bigger than 8mm!
Yes these creatures climb (like you wouldn’t believe) so only considering potential issues at ground level is not going to work – they aren’t slugs.
Yes these creatures gnaw (again like you wouldn’t believe) so plastic plumbware, wood and sandy cement mixes are no obstacle – these aren’t nibbling mice.
Yes these creatures are going to evade and overcome any attempts you make to catch them or stop them accessing food, shelter & warmth – don’t under estimate their intent!
Because Pestology solely deals with rat ingress into building fabrics, all here literally choke on the subject all day every day so we have unparalleled experience and expertise in the matter.
As both an accredited drainage company AND a qualified pest control company, we competently span both industries – there are no knowledge gaps that you may feel a builder can fill.
We understand the ways rats will get into buildings, why they are doing so and what they hope to achieve once they are in – in many ways they have quite predictable behaviour in this regard.
We’re equipped too with top drawer diagnostic tooling – rather than cement mixers and radios, we carry CCTV equipment and inspection cameras chosen specific to the role of diagnosing and remedying rat ingress into building fabrics.
So use Pestology to fix the issue and you’ll get a result – the devil is in the detail very much so with this line of work.