rats in attic insulation

Rodents gain access to your home’s insulation through your attic and walls, and there are several ways they can enter your home. The damage caused by mice, rats and squirrels is frustrating enough, but many of these rodents also carry diseases in their droppings. The best way to keep rodents out of your insulation is to prevent them from entering your home at all. This means you must find and block all entry points, and eliminate the things around your home that make it an attractive place for mice to nest. There are a few different types of rodents that can invade homes, and many ways guides on the rats in attic insulation. It is important to know which variety of rodent removal you have before considering removing them from your home. No matter what type of rodent you are dealing with there is always something you can do to manage your situation.

Inspect the exterior of your home for possible entry points. Many rodents can fit through openings as small as 1/4 inch. Look for cracks and holes around the foundation, between the roof and your eaves, where utility pipes and wires enter the house and in the siding.

Block cracks around your drainpipes and other wall openings with wire mesh. Place the mesh over the opening and apply quick-drying concrete to adhere it in place.

Mix joint compound into a ball of copper mesh. Push the mixture into openings that have no wires or pipes passing through them.

Make a ball out of galvanized window screen and stuff it into large openings such as gaps around windows or doors. Apply concrete patch over the blocked hole for extra protection.

Fill smaller gaps and holes around doors and windows with expanding foam insulation.

Maintain trees, flowers and other foliage. Keep them trimmed so they are at least 18 inches away from the foundation of your house. When these are not trimmed, rodents can use these to gain access to the upper levels of your home.

Eliminate rodent food sources that make your home look attractive. Store all garbage in trash cans with lids, and do not leave pet food out when your pets are not eating. Store bird seed and other animal food in sealed containers.

Store clothes and paper from your attic in sealed, durable containers. Loose clothing or papers are ideal nesting materials, encouraging rodents to move into your attic.

Cut a small hole in a piece of hardware cloth and place a piece of hardware cloth that is slightly larger than the hole over the first. Secure the top piece with a piece of wire so that it opens outward.

Cover an existing entryway with the flap side facing the exterior. Secure it with nails or masonry screws. This creates a one-way exit for rodents and ensures that you won’t have dead animals in your insulation.

How to kill rats in attic insulation have tried traps - If you have tried traps to kill rats in the attic and have failed, it may not be because the traps are ineffective. First, look at the exterior of your home. You will not catch all of the rats until you close off the rat holes in the outside. You do not want the animals coming and going as they see fit. Prevent new rats from entering and seal in the original group. These rats will be hungry and more likely to trigger a baited trap. Next, look at the type of trap you are using. Rats will avoid box-like traps. Even though the electrocution trap is effective and humane, it is rare for rats to venture inside the box. Glue traps also offer less than desired results. Glue traps require the entire animal to be on the pad. Most rats will step on and then immediately off. All glue traps catch is a bunch of ripped-out fur. The best traps for rats are snap traps. These should be baited with something sticky that cannot be stolen from the trigger plate. If the traps you are using are acceptable, look at where the traps have been set. You should not go on the assumption that the rats will be drawn to the bait. Place the traps in droppings or chew marks. These are the areas where the rats spend their time.

How to keep rats from chewing on pipes - The best way to keep rats from chewing on the insulation around pipes in the attic is to make sure you don’t have any rats inside of your home. There is no reason to live with rats. They are destructive animals that pose a significant health risk to anyone inside the home. Do not ignore your rat problem. If you want rats to stop chewing on your pipes, get rid of the rats. This can be accomplished through trapping and removal. It is a task most homeowners can take on by themselves, though professionals are available if you do not have the time or patience. No matter who is going to do the trapping aspect of the job, the homeowner needs to take care of the exterior issues. Rats cannot be removed from a property until there are no access points into the home. Do not worry about leaving rats inside. The house needs to be sealed or new rats will move in to replace any trapped ones. It will be a never-ending cycle. Make sure you seal up your home. Trapping is effectively done using snap traps. The traps, when baited, should be set near droppings or in areas of the home where the rats have been seen. Rats like to use the same routes often. Traps set in active locations will do well.

Insulation repair with rats poop - One of the first things you need to do when you’ve just resolved a rodent infestation is to consider insulation repair from rats poop. Rodent feces can contain dangerous diseases, so cleaning up the post problem is a necessity. The first thing you need to know is that you cannot repair the insulation that has been soiled. You must replace insulation. Pulling it out and shaking it off is no acceptable. Shaking the feces off the roll may push dangerous particles in the air where they can be inhaled. This is one way Hantavirus, a deadly, flu-like illness, is transmitted. Not only will you increase the health risk to yourself and others, putting soiled insulation back into the home will result in rodent pheromones remaining. These pheromones are released from rats and the waste they leave behind. Dirty insulation holds the potential to lure new rats to your property. Pull out the bad materials and discard them. Keeping them around will only create a dangerous situation for people inside of the home and may initiate a new rodent issue.

There's a reason you have rats on your property and in your house. Your property is in an area of the country that has a rat population (that includes most urban or suburban areas), and your property or house has features that are attractive to rats. Most commonly, this means that your property has food, water, and shelter. Rats like a safe place to live and scavenge and hide and have a nest of young and store food, and so on. A building makes a great location! It's warm and dry and safe, and in proximity to food, and so on. There's a reason rats are common in cities, but not out in the forest. Take these Rat Prevention steps:

How to Clean Rat Droppings

I consider the rodent waste cleanup and decontamination process an important part of a complete rat control job, for four primary reasons:

ONE: The droppings can contain diseases that humans can catch.

TWO: In heavy cases, the odor is just plain unpleasant.

THREE: The waste can degrade wood or drywall, or encourage mold growth.

FOUR: The scent of rat urine and pheromone can attract new rats and animals.

I don't do a full rat cleanup until I've solved the rat problem first. Once all the entry holes into the house are sealed, and once all the rats have been trapped and removed, then it's time to clean.

STEP 1 - VACUUM

Where possible, I vacuum out rat feces with either a portable vacuum cleaner as seen above, or a large industrial vacuum with a very long hose. It's only feasible to do so on flat surfaces, such as ducts, or floor areas with no insulation. If I use a lower-power vacuum, I can suck up droppings off of bat fiberglass insulation. That won't work with a strong vacuum.

STEP 2 - REMOVE SOILED INSULATION

In areas where the insulation is really heavily soiled with droppings and urine, and beyond cleaning, I remove the insulation by hand and bag it. I install fresh bat fiberglass insulation.

STEP 3 - FOG

After I remove the droppings and insulation that I can realistically remove manually, it's time to fog. There's no way to manually remove all rat droppings, and of course one cannot remove urine and fur grease. Some of the droppings are down walls. Many are basically embedded in insulation. So the electric fogging machine that I have covers every little nook and cranny of the attic. The cleaning product I like is called Bac-Azap, which is a blend of enzymes and cultured bacteria that eat away at organic matter such as feces and urine, and it kills the odor and the bacteria and pathogens.

Other Considerations - Don't breathe in!

How to clean up rodent droppings in the attic - Cleaning up after an infestation of rodents is not as easy as it may seem. Attic infestations usually mean an abundance of poop and urine waste, not something that you want to pick up one-by-one. Rodent waste is also something you should be very cautious of. A number of diseases can be transmitted through contact with rodent dropping, Hantavirus being one of them. This virus attacks the body, exhibiting symptoms similar to the flu. Close to half of the people who have contracted this disease into their lungs eventually die. Transmission is not just through touching rodent waste. If you use a vacuum or sweep too diligently with a broom, Hantavirus particles can be stirred into the air and inhaled. If you’re faced with the task of cleaning up piles of rodent waste, wear gloves, eye protection, and a respirator mask. This may seem like extreme measures, but rodent cleanup is not worth risking your life. If possible, areas with an excess of droppings should be gently cleaned through hand-sweeping. Accumulated piles can then be scooped into a waste receptacle. Any insulation that has been soiled should be removed and replaced; it is not worth your time to attempt to pick out all of the fecal material. The less you stir up the waste material the better. When dealing with rodent droppings, quick and efficient cleaning without worrying about salvaging materials is the safest method.

What products to clean up rat urine?

Anytime you are cleaning up urine you should avoid dousing the area in bleach. Bleach is a wonderful product and has excellent indications for cleanup with rodent control; however, the reason jumping right to bleach is ill-advised is because bleach mixing with the ammonia in urine will create mustard gas. Mustard gas, if inhaled, will cause chemical burns within the lungs, resulting in permanent damage. If you value the ability to breathe without pain and agony, you should wash areas of urine with an enzymatic cleaner first. Enzymatic cleaners will break down the urine particles into inert substances. Once the area has dried, bleach can be used as a follow-up cleanser. Dawn dish soap is another effective cleaning agent prior to bleach usage. Dawn will not eliminate all of the germs and bacteria associated with the urine, but dawn will strip the area clean and allow the bleach to work more completely. Dawn is one of the most stripping soap agents available to the mass market. You should, of course, be very careful when cleaning up the waste of a rodent. Rat urine can contain harmful diseases like leptospirosis. If you are cleaning up a small amount of urine, the use of gloves is warranted. Larger cleanups should be done with eye and respiratory protection.