Keep getting mice at my parents place!!

[BusyBeeMummy1]

Guys any help in deterring these things!

My parents home is next door to a water resovior for thames water and has a considerable garden. I think they come from there. Ever since they moved in a few years back we keep getting the odd mouse in the downstairs. My mums fed up of putting traps up and the house is clean! What can we do or try to deter them from entering the house at a wits end here

Thanks

Get a cat! Have you checked the cupboards for holes/ cracks? You might need to seal them with expanding foam.

@vim i have a brother at home with SN and hes petrofied of them or we would have. Would this be the cupboards of the kitchen you mean?

That's where ours were getting in when we had the same problem. Do you keep all your food in sealed plastic containers? Is there anything loose in cupboards where they could eat through packaging?

@vim how did you get rid of them im so frustrated at seeing them!
Well some food is in containers but most food is in its original packaging my mums planning on replacing her kitchen soon is there anything we should implement.. you mentioned expanding foam?

I'm sure there is a plug in you can get that deters them. I'm away for a google and hopefully I'll come back with a link

This is the type of thing I mean, quite cheap so possibly worth a try

www.amazon.co.uk/Electronic-Mice-Repellent-Ultrasonic-Ware-House/dp/B071RB7P4L

@minor already got 1 of those plugged in but dont think its working!

Have a really, really good look at the outside walls, and see if you can spot any possible entrance points. Mice can squeeze through tiny spaces - and I mean truly astonishingly small. Look quite high up as well as at ground-level, because they can climb. Search around inside the house, too - in the backs of cupboards, around pipes, etc - for any gaps. If you find anything at all, stuff it up as tightly as you can with wire wool. We have cured a mouse problem this way.

... it may take an intensive search, which will involve moving things out of the way. We once found that they had eaten their way into a very old house through the wood panels on the wall behind the fridge - there was the most enormous mouse-created hole.

Oh my goodness! @time is wire wool better than pp who mentioned expanding foam?

Well, wire wool worked for us. Someone told us that they can eat through expanding foam, but I don't know if that's actually true.

What might be worth doing, too, if your parents have plastic pipes (I mean in their plumbing system), is to consider covering them, or as much of them as you can reach, with protective metal mesh. This mesh is made specifically for protecting pipework. We have had a leak caused by mice chewing through the pipework, and this also happened to a neighbour - mind you, that was before we stuffed everything up with wire wool.

The other thing I've noticed about mice is that the mouse population tends to rise and fall dramatically. Sometimes there are dozens of the wretched things, and then in some years there are hardly any. So if your parents are under severe attack now, take comfort that it most probably won't last.

@time thanks so much for your advice will pass on and hopefully resolve the problem. Cant believe some people willingly keep them as pets!

You're welcome. I hope you get it sorted. Good luck!

We had mice at our old house, found out they had got in through a hole drilled for a tv aerial wire many years before, I got all the outside holes repointed & got cheap poison pellets from our local corner shop, every time I found a hole inside I put pellets down the hole & blocked it with cheap basics brillo pads. We got rid of them within a fortnight by doing this.

I use plugs throughout my flat (one isn’t enougj, they don’t travel through walls)