TRANSCRIPT:
0:00 – Introduction
All right guys, in today’s episode, we’re on the hunt to figure out where these rats are coming in. This poor couple had purchased their home in January. They’ve remodeled. It, all they want to do is enjoy their home, but they can’t until this rat infestation is completely out of their lives.
They’ve hired three other rodent companies and they’re all scratching their heads.
So they’ve called the Twins to solve it.
And we’re about to do that. Right now!
0:42
Reviewing the problem with the homeowner
So you’ve had a couple of rodent companies here.
They’ve closed up all the entry points and you just, you just bought the home.
Correct?
Correct.
And so you’re still hearing activity after they’ve done all their entry point exclusions?
That is correct.
And I could see that they have some bait stations here too. Do these work?
Haven’t worked yet.
They covered all this. It looks like here too Stephen. And where were you hearing [the rodents]?
The activity was mainly between the kitchen wall and the bathroom wall.
Well, they’ve closed all your entry points here to the crawl space.
And then the kitchen is that is a kitchen close by here. Is that on the other side?
Okay.
…
We love the challenge!
We’ve got the technology to do it!
2:21
Getting started on the roof
We’re going to get started.
So there’s a four-inch stack right there, Dave.
Oh, sniff check.
A little pungent in here. Smells like sewer, so this is not the one.
This is the one that is down that hallway wall that Stephanie was referring to.
[QUICK WORKOUT BREAK]
Quick tip for using foam to block roof entry points for rats
4:05
One quick tip while we’re up on the roof. If you come a little close, see this foam here, you guys, this is not sustainable. And the reason why is the sun and the elements is just going to destroy this. So if you’re a rodent company out there, if you’re a homeowner, make sure don’t use this foam, it’s going to fall apart and you’re going to be right back to square one with the rodents getting back in.
4:25
So let’s go ahead and get the smoke machine and get it ready.
Okay. So we’re going to pump a bunch of smoke in here [to try and find unknown rat entry points]
Smoke testing to find entry points
So this is, this is a big vent here. It’s three inches, definitely behind the toilet. So let’s now go inside the house. See if we get lucky and find this super fast.
[Inside the bathroom] While we smell the vent up there, Stephen right away. Rat urine and feces right off the bat. Bad.
Where was that at?
On that vent? This toilet vent is right here.
This is the problem. They actually chew to the drywall.
Oh, they chew. Oh, okay. Not there. Right here.
Okay. Well, let’s see if we can get smoke. We’re going to go in the crawl space right now and see if we’re getting any smoke.
6:30
Checking the crawl space for rat entry points
All right, guys, this is the most exciting part for me because you never know what you’re going to find.
What I’m looking for is smoke coming up in this attic. If we’re getting smoke up in this attic, for sure, we found the breach in that area there, but opening up this attic, it does smell really bad
Did you catch a mouse underneath there?
Yeah. It’s actually got. Oh, yeah. Ooh, Ooh. That’s a big one. That is big.
So it’s definitely a Norway rat.
All right. So I’m going to head over to that bathroom. So follow me inside the, uh, the crawlspace.
Okay. I’m going to go to lunch, Jim. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.
Yeah. Thanks.
7:20 – Going into the crawl space
That’s a pretty tight crawlspace. So we know they’re coming in through the crawl space for sure.
Yeah. This tight pipe. It’s wide open right here. See that it’s in the half-pipe right there? That’s wide open to the sewer. And then you could see the grease mark on the plumbing here.
All right. So I’m going to head over towards that back there
RAT SIGHTING IN THE CRAWL SPACE!
There it is right there.
And here they are, they’re running all over. See the smear mark right here?
Now I know why Stephens [having issues with his] kitchen sink. There’s absolutely no fall on this plumbing grade.
Look at what the plumber did. Absolutely ridiculous. So that’s why his kitchen sink is stopped up.
He has absolutely no grade look, go what they did here. They used the piece of pipe just to set the pipe on. Yeah. That’ll pass code. This is awesome. At least we found it.
So what’s happening, you guys, is they’re traveling through this system here. And getting in from that hole over there.
Well, getting a lot of smoke now I’m going to start heading over to that one pipe that we found coming in.
All right. Here’s a good indication too: cable lines full of secretion.
They have been coming in and out of this place right here. Oh yeah, look at the smoke.
So here’s what’s happening.
They’re coming into there, they’re getting into the old cast, iron running across underground, and ending up over there in that other location.
Definitely gonna have to cap this bad baby off right here.
You could see hanging around in this corner right here.
All right. Let me go outside and report back to Stephen and the team.
10:10
Sharing our findings with the homeowner
Oh man, that was a good find there. Stephen is going to be super, super happy. Wow. Oh my gosh.
You’re not going to believe it. Exactly where you said in that hallway there is smoke. Just coming completely out. So we know we have a break there.
Number one way they’re getting in right over here next to you there’s a wide-open pipe. So they’re coming into the pipe, up into your old sewer system.
And then, just to give them another option. Just to focus just only on that wall. He doesn’t want to do the enzyme. He doesn’t want us to do all the patching, his kitchen line that we were going to be including.
So he just wants to focus on that cast iron pipe.
11:04
Time to get to work!
All right, so we’ve covered the vanity, covered the toilet. A little protection here. HEPA vacuum. Just took a dose of this stuff. Vitamin C right? Get up close so you can read it, but it’s a thousand milligrams of vitamin C with a thousand milligrams of essential phospholipids whatever that is.
I just know that this really does a great job of boosting my immune system. So when I’m breathing all of that bacteria, this thing is helping me fight it off.
Right. So we’re going to go ahead and open up. This here, if you were in this bathroom and you took a whiff, you would say, “Ooh.”
11:50
Let’s go into the wall!
You can see all the chew marks right there. Look at that.
Okay. It looks like we’re going to have to open up maybe another area here.
Okay. So we opened up right here, but there’s really no breach. And the piping, we did find a vent pipe for the shower here.
We found a hole that they tunneled underneath here. That’ll get sealed up, but more importantly, we’ve got to find where that breach is in the pipes. What we’re going to do is open up behind the toilet here and see what we can get access to.
12:28 – Checking behind the toilet
All right, guys, starting to feel the adrenaline here. Ooh, it smells. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go.
Okay. Let me see a flashlight. Ooh, man. Look at that rat feces.
Okay. This is how they’re getting up into the attic.
Yeah, I see this. Yeah. All right guys. So look what we found here. We found a dead rat carcass here.
So you look at the eye right there. That’s a dead one. And then look at this one here, look at this one. Look at that. I mean, it’s like plastic, and then look at the little baby. The smell is so bad. What we’re going to do is just neutralize it with our Twin-Zyme here. This right here is going to kill bacteria. This allows us to work in a safe environment and you start to really saturate the area where all the urine and deprecation is. I mean, it’s already smelling better. You see all the dead rats here.
All right. So we’ve opened up two spots and we’re still not able to see where an obvious breach is. So we’re going to have to re-smoke it. Now that we’ve got the walls opened up, let’s perform a smoke test and see if we get smoke coming up the upper part of the wall or the lower part of the wall. So we won’t be continuing to open up walls here.
So let’s, uh, let’s get the smoke machine back up and running and see if we can pinpoint this.
Okay. Here’s Mickey here’s Mighty, and then here’s Minnie. Oh. And looking at an old rag right there, guys that they use for nesting, look at that. And you don’t want to give me $5,800 to do this?
14:17
SMOKE TEST SUCCESS!
Right at the bottom. They have to remove this toilet.
Hey Stephen, look at the smoke.
Oh wow!
All right. So we’re going to go ahead and start removing this toilet, and get better access. And that’s the big difference between us as a rodent control company versus other control rodent control companies.
We have the ability of the licensing to open up walls where other companies don’t, they don’t know how to remove and install toilets, or repair the pipes. So that’s a little bit of competitive advantage we have over a lot of the rodent control companies.
14:57 – Removing the toilet
David’s going to show you how to lift the toilet. Good thing he did those pushups on the roof here. He’s just pumped up. You could tell.
All right, so we’re going to go ahead now and open that section up right there.
Look how much chewing they’ve done. You guys, behind this wall, that’s what Stephen’s been describing. All that. That’s what they’ve been hearing. Look at that hole that I saw in the crawl space. So bad. Look at the brown, the brown color. Now, instead of white, it’s turning brown. It’s just because of all of the secretion and oils.
15:39
WE FOUND A HUGE RATS NEST!
Oh, shoot. Look at that rat’s nest! Oh my God. I knew they were in there. Okay. Look at that. Whoa, guys. Oh, shoot. They’re coming out. They’re coming out. Get the bag. That’s a big one. Ooh. Okay. Let’s go. Don’t scare them out. We’ve got to get them. Okay. They’re going up to the attic now. There’s a bunch of babies. You guys, there’s a bunch of babies right there. Okay.
Yeah. Get the bag. He took off up in the attic. No, the other one here in the bag.
Take this out, guys. We gotta take this out.
17:24
Shop-Vac Rat Removal!
Woo. It was a rush that doesn’t happen all the time. You guys, that does not happen all the time. Man. I got to go outside and take these rats outta here. A lot of the babies were sucked up in this vacuum.
The good thing about rats going up into an attic is the fact that if we close off the entry, the good thing is now they’re going to get very hungry. So we’ll aggressively trap, whatever traps are up there right now, they’ll get hungry and we’ll be able to trap them.
18:38 – Counting the rats removed with the Shop-Vac
All right, guys, let’s see how many we got. I was able to suck up here in this vacuum here.
Oh right there. 1, 2. How many more? There’s another one. Another tail right there, right there.
Boom. Oh 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. We got six of them!
That was all from that wall right there.
19:23
“I wish I knew you guys before…”
Another Satisfied Customer!
Stephen: I already called different companies before you guys, they never cure the problem. I mean, if I wish I knew you guys before all these companies, I would have taken care of this problem a long time ago, three months ago,
I really look up into that wall here.
See if he could see it. Boy, that was a huge event right there with those rats in that wall.
19:53
FINISHING UP!
All right guys, while the guys are going out for lunch. A plumber is coming out right now, they’re going to be cutting that pipe. They’re going to go ahead and seal everything off and we’ll be good to go!