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Welcome to another episode of Peskies Pest Control podcast here in Birmingham Alabama with Michael and Travis. We do this podcast as a community service for Birmingham, Hoover, Vestavia Hills, Mountain Brook, Helena, Pelham and all other surrounding areas!
Michael Wienecke
Hey, so today I want to talk about rodent exclusion, something that I’m very passionate about. I know Travis is very passionate about. Good Brautigan, good rodent exclusion. Definitely, definitely very important. So we’re going to show some images talk about a little bit and just kind of go through how we do it differently. And, I mean, our track record is pretty good. Travis, would you not say?
Travis McGowin
I will, I would definitely agree with you on that. It’s frustrating, because I think exclusion is very, very overlooked in terms of the pest control industry, because you really think about it exclusion is the end all be all, sealing, you know, sealing rodents out, even sealing pests out, sealing things out is a guarantee that they won’t come back or that they can’t get back in. And you know, time and time again, we go on some of these, some of these jobs that we go to. And unfortunately, you know, there are there are companies out there that all they do is they throw bait boxes at it Wait, you know, if it’s a rat or a mouse problem, they throw bait boxes at it, or something of that nature. And they never really get, you know, to the root of the problem, which is keeping them out in the first place.
Michael Wienecke
Couldn’t have said it better myself. You know, we’ve had a lot of rodent callbacks is what I call it, not our callback, but another company’s callback. And the first thing I always say is, you know, did they give you a warranty? No, they didn’t give you a warranty, or you know, the customer guy, no, they didn’t give us a warranty, it was just, you know, as needed basis. And then, of course, rats are getting back in the house after a couple of weeks. And then so they call for a second opinion, we come out. So just wanted to show some pictures of what we consider, you know, not great exclusion work. And some of these pictures are excluded, but they left other holes wide open. So if you’re going to do one, you got to do them all.
Travis McGowin
That’s the That’s the true, that’s true.
Michael Wienecke
So here’s one we got right here, big complex, big apartment complex. So walking around looking around the outside, so we’ve got obviously a PVC drain line, some AC lines going in, and they found it. So they just they put a bunch of that foam not only does it look nasty, in my opinion, it’s it’s not hard at all for them to chew right through, they can get right in that, you know, in a couple seconds. I mean, it takes no time at all. So the way we would do it differently is we would tear all that out, and then we would either use an excluder, which is basically a composite of mesh along with a what’s the word I’m looking for? Help me out here, Travis. A fabric there it is a fabric with with with a mesh inside, so they can’t chew through it. And then we would mortar over that. So you’re getting two layers of protection. You’re not only getting the excluder, but you’re also getting the mortar. So of course, we are careful if there’s any gas lines or anything like that, we would not border that because we don’t want that gas line rubbing up against the mortar as it moves or anything like that. So this next one great exclusion job on the vents. Biggest thing, like I said, they are still having a road an issue. So you can see both of those PVC pipes coming out. And Travis, what do you say?
Travis McGowin
So right here, and I actually just had this same kind of issue. It wasn’t it wasn’t poor exclusion, there was no exclusion done on the house yet. And that was why the customer had called us, but actually had a very similar issue to this where the ventilation for the crawlspace was formed out of the brake work, which is fine. And we did have some pipe work. And things that ran you know, between those ventilation cracks, which is pretty standard. What I like to do in this situation, kitchen is the full gaps that have no PVC pipe or anything like that running out of them, I will use the hardware cloth, but in the gaps where the PVC pipe is coming out as long as there is adequate ventilation on either side of those. So you know, case in point with this picture, I’m assuming that there’s more ventilation going across the house a little bit further down on the left to the right side of this so if there’s adequate ventilation, so what I’ll do is I will go ahead and seal those two gaps up with pre mixed concrete.
Michael Wienecke
Yeah, no, that’s perfect. Like like you had said as long as there is adequate ventilation which you’ve got two holes on the right and one on the on the left. As you can see, whoever did this, they left it open and I could actually stick my two fingers up under that mesh. Thus far a rat or a mouse can fit right through that hole and they’re right back in the building so
Travis McGowin
pretty The other thing I like about the the concrete is the I feel like that’s more of a stability thing, too, you know, some of those pipe work probably don’t need to be jostled around anyway. So you know, not only are we eliminating the problem that you see in this picture with the, with the hardware cloth, not adequate, but you’re also kind of helping stabilize the end of those pipes too. But,
Michael Wienecke
yeah, 100% Not only that, I mean, just with that hardcourt hardware cloth, 23 gauge, wire mesh, whatever you want to call it, rats can obviously chew through plastic. So if they really want to chew through that, and if you were going to use hardware cloth, I would have put something around that pipe to fill in that gap. If you know if that’s what you had, or that’s what you wanted, there’s, there’s, you know, 10 ways to skin a cat. So it doesn’t have to be done all the same way. Just biggest thing is excluding those holes. So keep going around. So same deal here got another AC unit, they found it, not not a hard one, this one actually actually had a small hole up under that gas line where something was getting in. So here are these are my favorite crawlspace doors, you’ve got a wooden door, matched up with the ground, as we know, pretty much any animal can dig. So a rat, a mouse has no problem fitting, you know, a small hole under there, and then right into the crawlspace, where they’ve got access into the entire building. Hey, you’re
Travis McGowin
just lucky that that house actually had a crawlspace door. Because mean time and time again, I come across houses that have no crawlspace door on them. So you know, there, there’s a step in the right direction there. But you know, that that crawlspace door that you just showed, probably pretty adequate for keeping things like cats out possums, raccoons, but when it gets down to something smaller Rats Mice, you’re you’re you’re you’re still looking to have a problem.
Michael Wienecke
Oh, 100% Man, I drive around my neighborhood all the time, see a crawlspace door. And I’m like, there’s probably a bear in there. So same here, so we’ve got a dryer vent. And you know, they excluded the entire house, but they left the dryer vents wide open. So we see it a lot where rats will get in a dryer vent, though they’ll chew of a very small hole, especially in that aluminum, bendy tube, whatever it’s called. And it’s hard to see. So getting in there and having that avenue to get right back into your house. You really got to seal that up. And you want
Travis McGowin
nobody, nobody looks behind their dryer. I mean, really, as long as there’s air flow and your clothes are drying, I mean, typically nobody looks but I did I had a customer. A while back that had the very same problem. There was no vent cover. They had rats running through the house in the daylight, they actually saw rats run across the floor from their laundry room to their kitchen. Rats had chewed through their water lines up underneath their sink where the water lines and the drain lines had went from the dishwasher. And you’re within about 15 to 20 minutes of inspecting and going around and looking through the house. I found the culprit which they said to other companies prior to us had missed, but they just never looked behind the dryer. And that was the main the main runway. So we added a dryer vent as well as a metal cover because these were some significantly large rats. So we did put an animal proof cover over that. And they never had another rat in the house again.
Michael Wienecke
Right, that’s all it takes is just like Setsuna all up. And it’s funny you say that because I would say the three main spots that are never looked at is behind the stove, behind the fridge and behind the dryer. Definitely. Same here, we got another dryer vent wide open, I honestly don’t even see the metal tube at all. It’s just a wide open square. So potentially, you know not even a rodent issue. That could be a raccoon that could be a possum, chipmunks, squirrels all that can fit through there. So same deal here, you’ve got your big line coming in your electrical line coming in and it’s wide open on that top part. So excluding the left right sides of the that area is fine, but you’ve got to do it all. So recap of that same deal with these big AC electrical lines going in just leaves a huge avenue for them to get back in. crawlspace door, same same problem around the building. Same lines, so we’re just kind of reiterate this one was my favorite. So it’s hard to see exactly. But you see the right side of the van is completely excluded with wire mesh, maybe hard to see but you can obviously see that the dryer vent and that gaping big square that they shoved in there just huge opening huge.
Travis McGowin
So it’s funny that you show this picture because that was quite literally the same case that I found at another house that had the brake formed out for the crawlspace ventilation so they What I ended up doing with that, because the gaps were too big to fill with with, with concrete. So I did seal up the existing ventilation with my wire measure hardware cloth, and then actually took and I had to, I had to actually drill into the brick on this one and actually make the wireframe go around the actual dryer vent itself on all sides to seal it up, because it was just it was just so large, there was nothing I could really do that was going to stay there for the long term and hold and keep things out.
Michael Wienecke
Yeah, yeah, I mean, that can be a difficult fix right there. But there are, there are several ways to do it. I mean, what we do is, or what I do is I pull out the vent, draw me a hole around the 23 gauge wire mesh, cut my hole and then fit it in there and screw it that looks nice and pretty. And you can barely tell is there so and I didn’t even mention in the photo. But right there. The cleanout is also wide open. And I’d say a mouse can probably fit through that hole right there. So all right, huge overlooked area are always gonna be tree branches. And we’ve talked about I feel like we talked about rodents a lot, because we we just see a lot of problems with rodents. But tree branches touching the roof line, right up against the the building always going to be an avenue for any kind of an animal to get on the roof and eventually find a way into that the property. As you can see,
Travis McGowin
I’ve even had some people. I’ve even had some people that have had limbs grown up against the side of their house that were so large, that over time, the wind blowing those tree limbs and those trunks of those trees has rubbed a entire hole into the side of the eve of the house. And then that was where they had rats getting in. So in the case of that customer, we literally cut down the trees that were touching the house and they never heard another noise in their attic after that.
Michael Wienecke
Yeah, I mean, if you take away that ladder, there’s no way for them to get up on the roof. I mean, you know, it’s very hard for them to climb that brick over the facial in the soffit they can calm the brick, but it’s very difficult to get over that that roof edge. So and then our last one same deal here. We’ve had some kind of an animal I’m assuming a squirrel. We did not we weren’t able to get inside the attic because it was just so tight. But we do have cameras up and all that so we are we are treating this area. But same deal like said we would have covered the gable vents from the outside so nothing would be able to get into the attic. And then of course have that runway all the way throughout the apartment. So yeah, Anna Lee, biggest thing, like I said, we just wanted to show kind of what we run into every day, how we how we handle these situations, and what we would do. And of course, you know, it’s it never hurts to get a second opinion. And it certainly never hurts to see pictures of the work that’s been done. I mean, you know, if someone’s building a house, you would probably want to see their previous work before you just, you know, had them build your house. So again, you know, that’s just that’s how we do our stuff. That’s how we try to be different try to try to make everything as tight as possible and we certainly don’t want to call back. Obviously, if we get a call back. We’re going to come back and we’re going to solve the situation but I’m Michael with Peskies Pest Control and give us a call. We’d love to help you out anytime. 205-470-8161
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
