I’m a DIY and I just finished putting in a new bathroom floor in my house. While preparing to reinstall the toilet, I pulled the wadded up rag out of the toilet waste pipe and noticed that it was all neatly chewed up on the underside. Something had eaten away at the rag from inside the pipe (and thankfully given up before it chewed all the way through). There were larges scraps of the rag left in the elbow of the pipe a foot below the floor level. I wasn’t about to go sticking my hand down into the waste pipe, so I used a wire coathanger to fish all those scraps of rag out of the drain. As I was fishing around in the pipe, I saw a little rodent nose come into view, sniff around, and back away back down the pipe. It had to be a rat. Must have been attracted to the sudden light.
I went ahead and intalled the toilet. It works just fine. I flushed it like crazy to encourage the rat to go back to wherever it came from. I also poured a couple of kettles of boiling water down the adjacent bathroom sink drain. The boiling water flowed past the exact spot I saw the rat. I’m trying to give the rat a few subtle hints.
My only question is: Is there a problem with having a rat in the waste pipe in my house? I would prefer that it wasn’t there, but other than banging on the pipes and pouring boiling water down the drains, is there anything I can do (without harming myself or my family) to get rid of this rat. My 3 year old daughter has a hard time remembering to close the lid on the toilet after she uses it, and the idea of a slimey rat climbing out of a toilet and into my house kind of grosses me out. The idea of lifting the lid and seeing a rat sitting in the bowl also gives me the heebs.
Here are some facts about my situation. I live in the suburbs of Washington D.C. I’m on Arlington County’s sewer system. There is a residential construction site across the street from me. (Maybe the rat got into the system from an open pipe there.) I have cast iron pipes. Amazingly, the rat had to climb at least 6-7 feet up the inside of a vertical stack of cast iron pipe to get to the horizontal pipe I saw it in. How does it do that? What do rats live on while they are in the pipes? If we stop using our kitchen garbage disposal, will that deny it a food source? I always thought the stories of rats in pipes were the stuff of urban legends or were at least rare. Just how common is it to have rats in your pipes? Are PVC pipes better for keeping rats out, because they are slick inside? Can a rat really climb up out of my toilet? After all, it would appear that the only barrier is a couple inches of water. We have 1.6 gpf toilets, so maybe the narrower traps will keep the rat(s) out.
I made the possible mistake of telling my wife about the rat I saw. She’s not too happy about it.
If you have any advice and/or comments, please let me know.
Thanks.
-Dan
Replies
Well Dan, you won't have problems with the family tieing up the bathroom.
There is a main drain sewer back flow preventer available. You could install at the end of the line in b/4 it exits the house. I have heard of one installed in a low basement situation where city storm/sanitary sewer weren't separated. During hard rains, sewage backed up in some homes basements. My understanding is this was installed to prevent that. Disclaimer: I know nothing else about this system, but it should give you an idea that there is (might) be something available to solve your problem. Best of luck.
__________________________________________
Remodeling Contractor just outside the Glass City.
http://www.quittintime.com/
Certainly can. They lift the lid on their own. Bring the family along for good measure.
SINCE BEFORE THE BEGINING OF TIME.... it has been war. Dosen't seem to be working.
Aside from sheet glass rats can climb just about anything. best of luck.
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I wish I hadn't read this one!!!
You could flush a gallon of ammonia down the sewr line/toilet.This will repel the rats.I live in DC,we've got more than our share of these critters.Aside from that,you can modify standard traps by installing screws to the underside of a the traps perimeter,impaling them. Yup, nasty but it's war.
I like the amonia idea.
I was thinking about all sorts of ways to slice rats up and/or block them, but most would end up clogging up my pipes.
Back flow preventers work untill they learn that you have roof vents. 2" and larger are a piece of cake. Bar their entry or make it rough for them and they just seem to go else where. Your nieghbors will love it. Check your attic for inhabinates. Eradicate.
See one .... There are others.
Good luck guy.
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Did you see the movie , The Fugitive ? He runs down a city sewer drain with the law on his butt and the rats scurrying . I envision where your rat came from and how he got there . We had a post on a snake actually entering the house the same way. I can see a snake comming through the water especially if it a moccasin , but a rat that swims through a trap would be a new one for me but I dont live on a large city sewer system .
You should not have told your wife . hehehe. They would want to sell the house and move. Might get costly now that she knows it . Im sorry I see some humor in the story , but I dont believe its a biggy after you hook up the toilet . There simply was no trap of water holding it out .
Tim Mooney
Tim,
that's the kind of reassurance I was hoping for. The toilet is hooked up now, and has been for two days. No rats in the house yet. We've lived here for years, and no rats have ever come in before, so maybe it was just the dry pipe that attracted it. I had the rag in the hole for almost a week before I got around to putting the toilet back in. I'm sure the rat was thinking "nice dry warm pipe." The part that bothers me was that it had to travel quite a distance before it found my nice dry pipe.
Thanks. -Dan
This is serious business.
"Idaho (unknown city):
An unnamed woman sued the city for damages incurred to her home after a rat surfaced in her toilet bowl. The woman
apparently tried to kill the rat with a broom handle, shattering the toilet bowl and causing some $5,000 in water damage to property on the lower floor. She won her suit. The rat is still at large."
http://home.att.net/~toyletbowlbbs/toilets.htm
When Good Toilets go BAD!
That was good.
Tim Mooney
I was told (by a plummer) that rats don't like to go into water unless they have no other choice.
The trap, then, keeps almost all rats out of your house.
That explaination was always good enough for me. What I can't figure out is the above email where the woman broke her toilet bowl and somehow managed to cause $5000 in damages! What did she do, turn on the water and let it run for two hours or something?
Makes me think that is one of those folk legends that gets repeated because it 'seems like its true'...
Anyway, I would like to think it is not true because I would like to be able to relax while on the 'throne'!
Norm
From my experience on houses and women combined as such , she couldnt turn off the angle valve. I had a female renter that had a cammode stop up and the drain was stopped at the same time . Flooding occurred . She left to find me ! Of course by the time I got there the house was flooded. Why didnt she turn the valve off? She never thought about where it was comming from , much less to try to stop it all by her self.
I dont belive a rat swam through a trap anywhere that was full of water to get into a bowl. Id have to see it to believe it . We didnt believe the snake story here either , but that was at least a little more sellable.
Tim Mooney
anyone remember willard and ben..............their back
all they have to do is the back stroke
Daniel
Aren't they a delecacy(sp) in China?
LOLmakinsawdust
"Can rat's enter through toilets?"
I figured that was how Larry Martin was getting in here.
You ought to be flush with pride, having come up with a joke like that.Not only am I redundant and superfluous, but I also tend to use more words than necessary
OUCH!!!makinsawdust
You'd better believe the snake story, alligator follows.
Tom
"I dont belive a rat swam through a trap anywhere that was full of water to get into a bowl. Id have to see it to believe it ."
"America's Funniest Home Videos" had a segment once where a rat crawled up through a toilet. Guess someone set up a camera to watch their topilet and caught the thing in the act.I have this nagging fear that everyone is out to make me paranoid
LOL rats in DC!
Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country
Testing, testing, testing. 123 123
Mark Sysops put me up to this. It shows a way for me to get in and pour gas on the flames. Haven't been able to do that since last OCT!!!
Sorry about the interrupt - it was for a good cause.
Don
I can get rid of that rat.
I need, a pound of baked beans, 3 tacos, and a bowl of chile. About 30 minutes in your bathroom and a couple of magazines. :)
Is it possible the rat somehow got in there before you put the rag in. Had a kids poor little hamster find his way into a toilet opening once that wasnt closed, The toliet was put back on and wouldnt flush, dead hamster in the trap.
Edited 3/3/2003 6:39:48 PM ET by CAG
If you see him again and he's carrying a briefcase and wears glasses and is kinda small in stature, it might be my congressman.
Flush some beef chunks down...I think he's a vegetarian.
Arlington huh? Reminds me of one job up there a couple years ago we had raccoon trouble.Somewhere around Rock Spring Rd. One day, after getting a new dumpster the day before, I heard something in the empty container. A raccoon had climbed in, to get at some lunch trash, and couldn't climb out. Slick dumpster walls. That critter was pissed. So I opened the door and let the animal walk out. That was that. Few days after that, I pulled down the attic stair, BIG pile of crap. Damn, who in the hell did that up there? Usually the sheetrockers do that, in buckets, when the porta-potty is full. And we were a month from close-in. Figgured it was some demented neighborhood prankster. Noticed the insulation on the ac suction lines was shredded. Cleaned up all that. Next day, same thing. More shredded pipe insulation, and a pile of crap on the same spot between the folded up ladded in the attic stair. Also, some leftover pizza was munched on. (Hey, I was saving it for the next days coffee break.) Then I remembered the raccoon. We figgured the pipe insulation was giving the thing diarheaa. Finally got the last of the windows and the place secure within a few days of that. No more raccoon. The brown stain on the attic stair label was on the punch-list.
"Few days after that, I pulled down the attic stair, BIG pile of crap. Damn, who in the hell did that up there? Usually the sheetrockers do that, in buckets, when the porta-potty is full."
LMAO!!!!!!
Tim Mooney
Dan
Rats are the toughest critters on this planet. They can chew thru 8 inches of concrete and swim miles across raging rivers. They have to chew on something always otherwise their teeth grow into their jaws! Kill 'em somehow!
yup, and in the swim venue, traps are just a small obstacle, even 6 or more floor up.
Never saw one come out of a well functioning septic system though.
When I was in high school and also in college, I worked in a deli in a prestigious neighborhood in Manhattan, NY. Man, the rats used to come in the hundreds in to the basement and go thru all the stocked cartons; seems they loved "Special K". Well, we fumegated, etc., but the best was me picking them off with a BB gun, now that was fun. Only bad part when they died and I had to crawl and search out the dead ones, I can still rememeber the smell, but I got used to it. Seems whatever we did they always came back - bigger than cats. I miss the good old days!
Well, at least you don't have to worry about the black widows in the two-holer!
Average Joe says:
I'll wait here while YOU go wrestle the wild alligator.
Oh yes the black widows and recluse spiders.
I still say a toilet trap won't stop a rat. History Channel ran a special on it. Since it didn't have any thing to do with Gov't why wouldn't it be believeable. They showed them comming up through the toilet and down the stacks.
Find one go look for the rest of the horde.
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PS Start a thread on SE Asia rats and what's for dinner?
I didn't see the History Channel special you mention, but I do beleive they showed rats doing what you describe. While I agree that a rat probably can enter a house through a toilet trap, I just question whether a rat is likely to do that. Nature documetaries where they show the animals up close are notorious for staging scenes and using trained animals. From all the responses to my question, there has only been one first hand account of a rat coming up out of a toilet. So I'm not going to worry about it too much. We'll stop using our disposal for a week or two, and hope the rat(s) move along to another house if they haven't already. They have tens of thousands of houses to choose from on this county sewer system. All I have to do is get them to leave mine alone.
I could try to kill them in the pipes, but I'm not sure how to go about doing that, and since my pipes connect directly to the county's pipes, the rats think they are all the same pipes. They don't know where mine stop and the county's begin. Unless I have a few instances of rats actually coming into the house, I don't think I'll try any drastic measures like the back flow valve that some have suggested.
Thanks for all the reponses though.
-Dan
Dan, I can confirm your fears in near first hand form. Seems I was a toddler and my mother lifted lid of basement toilet to find a cuple beady eyes looking back at her. Slam went the lid. No sign of rats in that toilet since. The memory is still strong enough more than 40 years later, to where ole mom puts a weight on that basement toilet lid anytime they leave town for any length of time. Now to veer from knowledge to urban legend teritory. I recall (was it TV or newspaper?) that the typical american diet was reported as so high in nutrients that our bodies do NOT fully utilize or process it. Hence some pretty nutritous albeit disgusting stuff flows past sewer rodents in a conveyer belt style. Seems like a motivating factor to reduce the amount of food run thru a disposer anyway. Reminds me of Hansel & Gretal finding their way using food crumbs. Good luck in remaining rodent free and perhaps more luck in loosening that image from your memory. For what it's worth this occured in Portland Oregon on a city sewer system. -Bill