Rat Control - Rat Infestation Solutions

As with all problems there are solutions for your rat infestation but the initial and detailed investigations are vitally important if you are to find the correct solution quickly.

Far too many people have suffered many years of infestation due to poor advice and incurred great expense in trying to control rat ingress within the property as apposed to stopping them entering in the first place.

There is not one magic bullet for all rat problems i am afraid and quite often a couple of issues have to be addressed in order to sort the problem, below are the most common solutions

Drain Rat Valves or Flaps

These allow waste and water to flow through the drainage system but prevent rats from coming upstream and entering your drains, on the down side they have to be installed within a chamber and you can not install them in shared systems within the UK as these are owned and maintained by the water companies, nor will they prevent internal venting or drain fly infestation if the rats have tunneled from your drain to your sub-floor, wall cavity etc

Drain Liners

Cipp and spot repair liners are used for capping redundant drains, branch lines and manholes, however given that rats can chew through wood, brick and plastic easily a 3mm wall of fibre glass liner offers little resistance to a hungry and persistent rat.

Interceptor Traps

These traps were installed to stop sewer gas and rats from leaving the sewers and entering private systems and we usually find the cap in the traps rodding eye missing which allows the rats to by-pass the water trap itself, replacing the cap or installing a new trap can sometimes work but history tells us that rats revisiting a system and following a scent trail will often swim through water traps including those on toilets

more on interceptor traps here

Drainage Excavation

I am sorry to say that when we are dealing with a live manhole that has been built over or where a pipe has broken and become displaced the only answer is to excavate, obviously this involves some upheaval and disruption but ultimately it is a means to an end.