How to Get Rid of Rats
We get calls seemingly every day from homeowners wanting to know how to get rid of rats. These pesky little rodents have a nasty habit of coming in numbers to eat your food, leave disease ridden droppings and die in walls to stink up your home. There is a laundry list of negative side effects associated with rat infestation so it’s important to act fast.
Getting rid of rats is a three step process – starting with finding out where they get in and how they survive in your home and ending with blocking their entry ways. Here are some more details about how to get rid of rats in your Atlanta home once and for all.
Inspecting for Rats
The first step is to find the source of rats in your house. The problem is that rats are adept at getting through spaces as small as just a half inch in diameter and some even smaller. They can get in through almost any open space in your home, from a utility line to a vent to a hole under your roofing tile. Full inspection is the first step in getting rid of rats, regardless of the age of your home or how well sealed up it is.
Trapping Rats
Once we know where the rats are coming from we can learn how to get rid of rats in your home. The first step is to set 12-20 size traps throughout the attic where rats are most likely to travel. By nature rats are wary of anything that deviates from their routine, so you need to place traps where they consistently travel and usually with some form of bait to attract them. We use a number of traps and continuously check them over the course of a trapping schedule to ensure they are cleared and reset.
Getting Rid of Rats through Exclusion
The final step is to block all entry ways into your home. Once we kill the rats inside the house, we need to make sure new ones cannot enter and replace them. We do this by sealing up any holes with wire mesh and ensuring no rats can get trapped or die in a space in a ceiling or wall of your home. Cleaning up the droppings and urine left behind by the rats is also important to avoid any potential disease or new rats coming into the space.
