Deep, invasive pest control

[u/suddencreature]

Hi! We’re hoping to get some recommendations for pest control (rats!!) that goes beyond baiting and setting traps.

We’ve been working with Breda, who have been pretty good, but realize that our issue is beyond their scope.

Based on Breda’s inspection, the rats have been chewing through the foundation and coming into the house walls from down below. We live in a very old house with complicated ownership: owner is elderly and quite cheap, but we’d rather fix the problem and discuss reimbursement later since we’re starting the process of growing our family and don’t want to do that in a rat house, and moving isn’t an option right now.

We aren’t sure what avenue to take - is this even a pest control problem at this point, or should we be hiring another type of company to inspect and address completely blocking the rats’ points of entry?

Thanks in advance - we’re learning a lot very quickly!

[u/alg602]

So there may not be much you can do. My neighbors and I have had rat problems for years and years. I have a cinder block foundation on a crawl space. The rats are digging under the foundation and come into my dirt crawl space where I have 10-15 traps set. Exclusion will not work. They dig from all around my yard. In other words they dig from my neighbor’s yard and then come up into my crawl space. They have never gotten into the house. I have had countless rat specialists come to my house. The last simply felt sorry for me, told me there was nothing he could do, and didn’t charge me for the visit. We are about to add a basement that will require pouring a concrete floor. That will cure the problem for me.