Wyandotte County, Kansas City Rat Control Situation:
I pray that you receive my email. My house in Kansas City was infested with roof rats this year while my Daughter and four year old grandson were living in the house. I was living in the back guest room. They were continuously ill with flu symptoms and moved out. We had hired Tru Pest Control to help with the rats with no avail. Finally after they moved out the rats disappeared. However as my husband and I removed some built in cabinets in the family room, we uncovered two rat holes, nests, lots of feces. We disposed of the cabinets and haven't done anything else since. We are still living in the guest room in the back of the house. We do not have any rats. The house was built in 1940. The main house which was infested with rats has original wood floors and the entire front house has a crawl space. The guest room was originally a garage so it sits on the ground and has a cement floor. I am 58 yrs old, my husband is 59 yrs old and has been disabled since 1992. He has had his aortic and mitral heart valves replaced with mechanical valves and has a pacemaker. The BIG question is, will the house ever be safe for us to live in again? The decontamination sounds brutal and I am very sensitive to chemicals. We will never own the home free and clear in our lifetime. Should we even attempt to fix it up to live in or move??
Kansas City Rat Control Tip of The Week
Are Rats Able to Enter a Property Through the Plumbing?
Rats are able to swim:
Rats are surprisingly flexible and they have some excellent swimming abilities. Even if they have to make their way in through your pipes, it won't take long for them to make their way into your home if they are located under it in the groundwater. A rat is a perfect size to get through most water pipes or sewage pipes and this can mean easy access into your home.
There are dry spots throughout your plumbing:
Depending on the way your plumbing bends, it is likely that there could be some dry spots within your plumbing or within the inner workings of your home. Rats may enter into your plumbing and may even build nests throughout these dryer areas.
Rats can damage your plumbing:
As well as being able to scurry through your plumbing, rats could potentially damage your plumbing or even clog up your pipes. If there is a major rat problem or a nest nearby, you could be risking the chance that you could damage your neighbor's pipes or have an ongoing rat problem in your own home.
Rats easily enter in through broken lines:
If there are areas of your plumbing that have fallen into disrepair, make sure that they can be properly fixed up. Broken sewer lines or tree roots in your plumbing can often be the perfect place for many rats to make their way into your property.
Check grates and drain covers:
Installing mesh or making sure that you have a proper cover for your drain covers can be important to keeping rats from invading your space. Regularly looking at all of your drains and making sure that a rat can't make their way inside can be very important.
Close your toilet lid:
Closing a toilet lid could be a simple practice you could use that can stop rats from entering your home.