What’s the best way to get rid of rats in your house?

As the Twin Home Experts, we get this question a LOT. What IS the best way to get rid of rats in your house?

So many homeowners battling a rat infestation want to know the best way they can effectively and efficiently get rid of rids in their house. 

So in today’s post, we are here to answer it for you!

Get rid of rats in your house efficiently! 

The best rodent extermination takes 5 key things:

1. Thorough rodent investigation and inspection
2. The best rodent extermination tools
3. Effective rat trap bait
4. Successful rat trapping techniques
5. Efficient rodent control monitoring

VIDEO STORY: Cleaning up after other rodent control professionals:

Here’s a video where we went behind Orkin after 9 months of rat activity:

In-Home Rat Inspection

The first step to get rid of rats in your house is the inspection and the investigation of the house for rodent activity. This phase gives us an understanding of the type of rats we’re dealing with which is key to the extermination. 

Is it the Norway Rat? The Roof Rat? 

Based on this investigation, we also want to determine the rat’s pathways where they’re coming and going. 

We also want to identify the severity of the possible rat infestation.

Is it a large colony of rats?
Are we catching it on time prior to a massive infestation?

Homes can be large and with many nooks and crannies for rodents to invade and nest. Because of this, we have to be extremely thorough and examine all possible areas of the house that may be affected.

Inspection and investigation would include looking in: 

• Crawl spaces
• Basements
• Exterior and interior of the house
• Attic
• Roof
• Surrounding areas of the property

This leads to the discovery of rodent entry points. This is the most critical step in efficiently getting rid of the rats in your house.

Where other rodent control companies get it wrong!

One of the biggest problems we see is when homeowners AND pest control companies cover a few holes assuming that those were the entry points. Then for maintenance, they will simply place a few rat traps and call it a day.

This approach is not effective and can actually cause a much larger infestation. 

Rats are smart and can breed very quickly. This massive growth in rat infestation can cause extensive damage to your home if not stopped.

Here’s a video where Terminex missed and failed to conduct proper exclusion work:

When dealing with rats on your property, the faster you mitigate the issue, the less damage and clean-up will be needed.

Get rid of rats in your house efficiently by…

Closing entry points with the proper exclusion materials

Rats can chew through a lot of building materials (such as wood, electrical, piping, and concrete.) 

Installing the correct exclusion materials

Making sure to use materials that do not disintegrate over time with the outside elements is super critical to prevent rats from returning.

Stop rats climbing in walls

Our anti-rodent climb solution is a great way to get rid of rats efficiently. We apply our Slick Barrier to brick, stucco, cinder block, and tree trunks preventing rats from climbing onto your home.

Proper cleaning or decontamination

Rats leave grease marks, urine, and droppings all over your home. This leaves their pheromones behind, attracting other rats.

In our extensive clean-up process, we begin by using a HEPA vacuum to remove all droppings and nesting materials. Then we apply our TwinZyme. This soaks into the building materials eradicating all odors and at the same time decontaminating.

The final step to get rid of rats in your house

Once the investigation, exclusion work, and clean-up have been completed, we begin to rigorously trap all of the rats left over in the home.

Proper Baiting of the rat traps along with placement of the traps is going to be very important in these final steps to begin what is known as decolonization.

Next, to ensure long-term success, we begin the monitoring. Monitoring with cameras is how we judge the effectiveness of the traps we’ve set in the event that we need to make adjustments.

Are the rats not interested in the bait? 
How many rats are left in a specific area?
Are rats still coming and going?
Which direction? 
Are they juvenile rats, or pups? 

All this data provides the proper strategy in order to completely eradicate the rats from your house.

What if there are still rats in my house?

Here’s where it can get very tricky. When everything above is done correctly, but you’re still getting rat activity, there’s a good chance you have sewer rats invading your home.

In order to properly investigate this specific type of sewer rat infestation, a UV nontoxic rodent drain smoke test must be performed.

This process takes a precise technique, utilizing the roof vents and properly capping off the sewer main, in order for the smoke to stay contained inside the sewer waste and vent system.

Here is a video showing our process for detecting sewer rats using our smoke machine:

Well, we sure hope this post answered your question, if you are in need of service, please feel free to contact us today!