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How do I get rid of rats?
Rats, yes like them or hate them the dark haired, long tailed rodent is a very unwelcome visitor to your home. They can carry diseases and can be a health risk to everyone in your home as well as causing damage to walls and electrical cabling.
Before we look at ways to move them on we need to understand how they live and what they like to eat. The average rat in the UK is around 150mm (6inch) long but rats living in some cities are now getting as big as a fat cat. Rats, as like most pests, can be difficult to move on as our homes and business buildings are ideal for them. Keeping them sheltered and warm, they will make nests inside walls, under appliances and in drains. They love the fact we will leave food laying around and they generally eat anything they can find. They will rummage through your bins and think nothing of eating all the food left out for the birds. Rats multiply very quickly, they can have a litter of up to 20 and can reproduce in just a month. So a simple infestation of two rats can, within a couple of months, easily get out of control.
So how do you know if you have a rat problem? Well there are some very simple ways, for example, look out for droppings along the walls or small footprints in the dust around the edges of your skirting boards. If you think they are there sprinkle some baking powder around to see if there are fresh marks after a day or so. They also make a fair bit of noise when they are inside the walls or in the loft spaces, and finally the smell! Best way to describe the smell is ammonia.
Moving rats on isn’t easy but your first steps are to try and find out how they are getting into your home. Look around the outside of the building and look for damaged drain pipes, gaps around bricks, vents and gaps under doors for some of the simple obvious ways they can get in. Check the inside of the building for similar access points. If you find some gaps that you can fit two fingers or more into then block them up / fix them ASAP adding chicken mesh, wire wool etc into mix. Next clean up any food mess that’s been left out and sweep around the edges of your rooms trying to keep objects that they can hide behind away from the walls, and lock down bin lids with bungee cords or something similar.
You will now need to look at getting rat poison or some rat traps just to make sure any rats still in your building are killed off. If this is too extreme / inhumane or you’re not able to leave poison and traps around then a good ultrasonic deterrent should move them on, presuming the lure of food has been removed. There are also a few natural deterrents that can also help keep them out like peppermint oil, black pepper and cloves around the area you think they are entering the building and along any walkways the rats are using. Keeping them out of your garden will also help. Rats hate open spaces so keeping your lawn trimmed and removing piles of leaves and wood will mean they will move on to somewhere less clean and tidy.
As mentioned above our PestGo2 Ultrasonic devices help deter rats and move them out of your building or loft space.
PestGo2 ultrasonic rat repellers can help deter rats in two distinct ways.
The main deterrent is targeted ultrasonic soundwaves. This just simply annoys the senses of the rat so much that it moves the rat on to an area where they don’t get annoyed by the sound. One of the neat features of our devices is that they also change the ultrasonic frequencies while keeping them within a band of frequencies that the pest hates so the rat doesn’t get used to the same sound.
Additionally, there are a couple of red “Eyes” LEDs that flash at various times. This has the effect that the rat thinks there could be another predator within the area so it quickly moves on to avoid a confrontation.
PestGo2 ultrasonic devices are designed and built in the UK and can be powered via a mains adapter or even run from a 12v (car type) battery if you’re in a remote location, away from mains power. Both options are available at the time of purchase.
Best regards
Sean Gunston