My friend is sharing her house in Southern California with packs of rats, which have taken residence in her attic space and within the many hollow, wood framed pilasters. We’ve tried to find the rats’ entries into the house but failed. Besides the noise and possibility of disease, she has to endure the stench of rotting rat corpses from time to time.
The infested attic of the master bedroom, 800 squre feet, is truss framed contains a gas furnace on a plywood platform, and fiberglass batt insulation which has been carelessly displaced, damaged and refmoved by contractors. Rat droppings are everywhere and and array of rat traps and poison are becoming less and less effective.
my best guesses on the rat’s access into the attic are the seismic isolation space between the chimneyand the roof framing and rusting weep screeds at the base of stuccoed walls that lack sufficient clearance to the embossed and stained concrete slabs and garden beds. I suspect the weep screeds because I can’t think of another way for the rats to get into the pilasters since the house is on a slab foundation.
I’m considering removing all the insulation and contaminants in the attic and reinsulating after blocking any holes or openings. I don’t know how best to address the opening around the chimney or what to do about the pilasters.
Any advice anyone?
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Replies
Hammerhead,
Have you tried the ratzapper trap. I runs on batteries and electrically shocks the rats. I have one and have killed close to 30 mice in my attic.
http://www.ratzapper.com
Mike K
Amateur Home Remodeler in Aurora, Illinois
Mike, check this thread at Knots, Specifically the 55 gallon drum... the rats scream and call the other rats to the barrel... guy said he caught hundreds on a farm. This would at least get a ton of live ones out of the walls, but plug the entrances, the whole citys rats might come.
Im sorry you have to deal, sounds disgusting, I wouldnt like it.
-zen
http://forums.taunton.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=tp-knots&msg=20468.1
those gizzmos waork...
Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming
WOW!!! What a Ride!
Insurance , and a match .
I've thought of that at times.