Rat Infestation

Effective rat control to prevent further rat infestation

A rat infestation occurs when one or more rats gain access to a building and begin using the structure for shelter and movement, even if they don’t live openly in occupied rooms. Rats enter properties for the same reasons people do — warmth, safety, and protection — and even a single rat poses serious risks to health, electrics, and plumbing. Rats cannot survive solely within walls or roof voids, so infestations exist because there is a hidden link between the building fabric and external food sources, most commonly the drainage system or the outside environment.

Effective rat infestation control means identifying and breaking those access routes, not simply removing the rats that are already present. Drains provide rats with warmth, safety, and an almost endless food supply, making them the primary source of most infestations. When defects allow rats to travel from the drains or outdoors into a building, the infestation continues indefinitely. This is where Pestology excels — by locating exactly how rats are entering a property and permanently sealing those routes, we stop the infestation at its source. This targeted, prevention-led approach is the only way to resolve a rat infestation for good.

In our book a rat infestation is when they enter your house. Your house is for you so when rats set up camp alongside then this is called an ‘infestation’.

It doesn’t have to be a large number of rats, even one rat will still pose a threat to your fixed electrical and plastic plumbing, along with significant health hazards should rats make their way into the living areas.

Rats want to enter your building fabric for the same reasons you occupy the building – it provides shelter, warmth and is a comfortable place to live.

Unfortunately for rats, there is no food within wall cavities, floor cavities or roof voids, so there is nothing for rats to eat in the building fabric and they can’t sustain their existence within it.

Each rat needs around 20g of food a day (which is around the same weight as a ‘Fun Size’ Mars bar) so don’t think the rats are getting by munching on the odd spider or clothes moth.

To achieve this, the rats will need a link from the building fabric to either a sewer and/or the great outdoors.

Usually it’s both as once the rats enter via the drainage they tend to burrow out or escape from the building fabric via weak points such as lintel bridges, vents, low level roof lines, etc.

That way the rats can access food from both the drainage and the great outdoors!

In the vast majority of cases it’s the link with the drains that sparks a rat issue within a building. Drains are warm, safe, secluded for the rats and of course full of food.

Every dishwasher on the street dumps the plate scrapings into the sewers along with every sink macerator.

Oils and fats from cooking congeal out inside the drainage to provide large reserves of calorie rich fat residues for the rats.

Commercial restaurants often have industrial size macerators that will blend up to 25kg of food waste each day and pump it all into the sewers.

Insect life such as slugs and earthworms often get washed through from gulleys and certain species such as the Oriential cockroach will often live inside waste systems alongside the rats.

On top of this there is of course the undigested food waste present within human faeces – yes, rats won’t let this go to waste either!

Drains are full of rats and these rats will then readily enter a building fabric where the opportunity exists as the drains are not the ideal place to rest or raise kids.

The key to resolving any rat ‘infestation’ is to break the links between pipe and building fabric and the great outdoors and building fabric.

That’s what Pestology does – we work to find these links and fix the rat infestation issue to keep the rats in the drainage and keep the rats out in the great outdoors.

This is the only way to fix a rat infestation for good!