There are 2 parts to rat proofing…
Stop rats coming into your living areas
This means you will no longer see the rats, find rat droppings and rats can’t contaminate food or food preparation areas, but the rats will still be able to access wall voids, floor voids, etc.
Stopping rats accessing the building fabric
This means you will no longer hear the rats and the rats won’t be able to damage pipes, electrical wiring, insulation or anything any other part of the building fabric.
1. Rat Proofing internally to stop rats getting into living areas
Rats are notoriously active gnawers with teeth that measure 5.5 on the Mohs scale of hardness – this means aluminium, copper, iron, brick & cement are all passable given time and intent.
We base our rat proofing on stainless steel – this comes in the form of various flexible and rigid meshes and is secured in place with hot melt and silicone adhesives.
We also have specialist tooling and access equipment to remove appliances (even where they’re integrated) so we can not only find these concealed rat entry points, we can rat proof them too – all without removing the kitchen units!
All rooms within a property are considered when we rat proof internally – just rat proofing the kitchen won’t stop the rats popping out somewhere else.
2. Rat Proofing the building fabric to stop the rats getting in
We’ll always survey to address this aspect as it’s impossible to accurately diagnose over the phone and our own CCTV drain inspection is always part of the rat proofing assessment.
Should drainage defects be confirmed via CCTV, our rat control operatives are trained pipe patch repair installers allowing us to fix minor pipe defects using internal resin patches without having to excavate – this saves a lot of money and disruption if the defect is under your extension!
Sometimes the defect cannot be easily repaired and the only option to rat proof is to install a one-way valve so as to stop rats reaching the defect whilst still allowing waste to pass through to the sewer. We only fit ‘Nordisk’ stainless steel valves – these are the very best units available with a proven design and WRc-approval.
Where rats are accessing via above ground routes, we can rat proof all such areas using materials and methods the rats can’t bypass..
All our rat proofing work is comprehensively photographed and detailed so as to provide a full audit of the process. This is useful if you wish to try and recover rat proofing costs from the house insurance, or a landlord, etc.