I need to vent a bit.

First let me get this clear I AM SO GRATEFUL TO HAVE A HOME!
I have a Mississippi Cottage that is a replacement for the home I had when Katrina Arrived.
It sits on a timber frame work that is definitely NOT going anywhere.
It is a modular home that was built in a factory and delivered to my land on a trailer frame.
They picked it up off of the trailer frame Rotated the crane 90º and sat the house on the foundation.

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The Cottage;

It was thrown together as fast as they could move them out the factory.
The builders lacked pride!
It's obvious by what I found hidden behind a sheet of plastic.
There were major problems with the sewer drain from the washer.
However the basis for all of the trouble was the water piping.

The water lines were run through the insulation creating a rat highway.
I've been dealing with the rats under the house and their destructive ways.

A rat had recently learned to chew through the Pex pipe to obtain water.
The first leak was a couple of weeks ago.
The insulation was waterlogged and the windproof sheet is also waterproof.
There were many, many gallons of water in that mess.
I cut the sheeting supporting the pool allowing it to drain somewhat.
Then I cut the around the sides and dropped the crap pile to drag it out from under the house.
What I found was evidence of rat activity going back a while.

There was the reason I was there, the gnawed PEX pipe.
Easy fix.
But wait what do I see?
The sewer line from the washer is sloped the wrong way, higher at the outflow than the beginning.
also no "P" trap. Then there is the mess of waterlines.
I've got to correct those things before I can close the bottom up.
While I Corrected the plumbing;

My BIL (with no experience but my directions) crawled up under the cottage and stuffed the spaces with insulation.
He and I replaced and sealed off the right hand 40% of the cottages' floor insulation that weekend.
Reps to my BIL He gave me 16 hours that weekend.

Then Friday the 13th I discovered, shortly after the fact, that the rats chewed through a pipe in the older/UN-renovated section.
I fixed that leak and readied for the work Saturday sans BIL.

Saturday was spent removing filth.
Old insulation removed from another 40% of the house.
One tug of old stuff pulled out the nest along with two adult rats who promptly disappeared into the last area of old insulation.
New insulation run and secured between the joists.

Sunday morning at about 8 the little pests chewed through the water line only 3 inches from where the line went up through the floor.
That was the furthest the waterlines go under the house.
Plumbing was repaired. Upgraded/corrected.

The old insulation is GONE.
The rats have lost their habitat.
They were last seen heading East at a great rate of speed.
The detritus of years of rat infestation was bad. But I've seen worse.
Insulation was installed.

The new insulation is an upgrade in R-value.
The old was R-11 was installed in such a way that left it with NO VALUE at all.
Now the insulation is either R-19 or R-30 properly installed & supported between the joists.

Installers secret Here!
Use an electric carving knife to cut insulation.
Yes the one that gets used on the turkey.

The finishing touches to the insulation installation have been made the last two days.
The wind proof sheeting is stapled in place.
I still need to add some more rat proofing shields I'm making.

Now maybe I'll catch a break and get to grill some chickens this next weekend.

 

Well that sounds like it was a fun job - NOT!

You might want to put out a few traps for a while even with all of your upgrades. The claim is that if you see one, there are at least 10 more around.

Good Luck,

hj

 

grill chickens? heck grill some rats up!

 

ya know, snakes eat rats.










just saying.................

 

The dogs got one of the rats a few nights back.
I learned at Terminix what to do.
I've placed bait packs for the rats.
And that sealing the area is the #2 step.

The #1 is get rid of the food source.

The food here is left over dog food in their feeding area in the yard.
We've been feeding them along the fence, on the grass.
Now this is 4 grown, pack socialized, spoiled, males so we string them out along the fence,
It's a run of some 15' long.
There is always some of the dry nuggets left behind in the grass.

I'm changing their feeding areas surface to 12"x12" patio squares. (maybe AC compressor pads?)
I can stake a frame add some sand for leveling and fill it in with squares.

Then we ( meaning my daughter who feeds them ) can clean up any left overs.
Keeping the area clear of food during the overnight period will go a long way to curing my problem.

There goes another weekend.

 

Nice to get rid of those rats, who knows what diseases they might be carrying.

I gotta say, this whole thing does not fall into the category of FUN!

 

Some friends of ours, lived in a trailer park some years ago. They were told that If you kept a pet snake in the house, the rodents could smell them and would stay away. It definitely works.

 

can you post some pics of these devil rats your battling? maybe get them large traps and penut butter so you can get a closeup look at one.

 

Snakes lol.

I know an old lady who swallowed a fly...

 

why oh why did she swallow a fly??

 

https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/n...ply&p=11316506

I'll contribute any I can gather.

 

as far as removing the food source if your dogs have leftovers they are getting too much in the first place. cut their rations. we had a redheeler (42lb spayed) and a sheperd/retriever cross(40 lb) they each got about 3/4-1 cup of top quality food per day. they both maintained full weight, were fit and full of energy. we did have to put them both down this year, but they both made 15 years so I'm fairly sure they didn't starve. they did get any food scraps that were too old to eat ourselves.

 

go back to copper water lines too to keep them away for water.

 

It sounds like you know what you have to do. I just want to say that with poisons you should also switch the poison every 3 months as rats and mice will grow an immunity to the paticular poison and pass it on to the young. I switch mine up more often then that but I also have 3 or 4 different types I use as well as the gel traps. I have only mice in my garage, no rats.