RATS!!!!! Help!!!

We have had rats recently. Pest control came out, we're now a good few weeks down the line and they went pretty quickly tbh, we've had three visits and the concern is now mice (not move, edited!) which I'm not so worried about as I've dealt with them before!

We couldn't find the entry point and neither could the rat guy, which possibly implies that it's from the sewer into the walls directly so if the problem returns we'll need to speak to a neighbour with the end of the drain and put a no return valve or whatever on the end of the drain which is on their property. Rat guy suggested a drain survey before doing that to confirm (a glorified camera in the sewer) but not to bother until they come back as it'll be a waste of money if they just chanced getting in iyswim?

We were told not to block anything until the problem had gone away, which seemed weird to me but basically we didn't want dead rats in the house and they would hopefully leave to die. We've only found one.

I wasn't comfortable with poison tbh and purposely chose a company who uses it as a last resort, but apparently our problem was that extensive without us knowing, we'd only heard a small amount of movement but knew it was rats as we've had mice before and they're much quieter (which is saying something as they're not quiet at all!), we heard louder scampers but what really did it was hearing the rats bickering in the attic, we've had pet rats so knew what exactly what we were listening to!

I'm our case, the poison could only be placed in the attic due to current living situation, so it's taken longer to shift. But it is happening.

I had the same problem, I really feel for you! They were in the roof space above my bathroom — I was weeing in a bucket at night for weeks because I couldn’t bear to go in there and hear them — and I too did pest control, 2 drain surveys etc at great expense. This was during lockdown: terraced cottage with a business next door that was closed during Covid so clearly nice and quiet for them!

The second drain company (rat specialists) suggested putting 2 long screws crosswise at intervals into my rainwater down pipes so the rats couldn’t climb up inside them. After spending over a grand on the other measures, it cost me about 50p to do this and no rats since (touch wood)! Worth a try.

Hope you get rid of them, it’s awful.

Is your house a semi-detached or terrace?

One of my family had a really bad rat infestation. The rats were eventually coming across via the neighbour's roof space in a semi-detached house.

Nightmare and so sad in your new place (I had rats once - it's just horrible).

Check for any holes around the outside of your house and broken air bricks where they could have got in and block. DH used the garage to dry out and store his vegetables and that attracted them in and we didn't realise we had a broken air brick in the garage and they got into walls. We covered it with a special cover (from Amazon) and DH filled the hole into garage plus a few others with steel wool and some sort of expanding foam that he already had. I chucked in some poison bait first.

They might not have come up the drains and would only get in through cracked pipes. Does anyone keep chickens or have bird feeders around you? That attracts them.

Good luck