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There’s a moose loose aboot this hoose

Well, actually more than one!. In a half-hearted go at replacing and re-designing my en-suite I prepared the way by lifting the flooring and doing all the necessary demolition work. As you do at my age, you quickly loose interest, so the scene of devastation sat for a week before I summoned the get-go to finish things off. In between time it became obvious that we had suffered the intrusion of a horde of unwanted house guests. It soon became apparent that they had somehow got into the voids below the suspended floor and took it as invitation to join us in the rooms above when I lifted sections of said floor. Can’t say I blame them given the current weather but whilst I might seem flippant, my good lady is, to say the least, beyond distressed. 

So the floor is down again but that has trapped the wee buggers in our living spaces. I have spent much time setting traps and dispatching the victims one by one. Why am I telling you this? Well I built this house way back in 1990 and as a relatively young, go-ahead electrical contractor I installed cabling for just about every conceivable system from fire alarms to whole house music systems. Back then I never thought one jot about rodent intrusion. If I had to do it again there would be no voids unless totally unavoidable. There would be no hidden routes to get between floor levels or rooms yet this was something I deliberately did to facilitate future service installation. If  I had to do it again whether reasonable or not the designer would declare an external influence code of AL2!
  • I did a job for a Judge and his wife, she said if I ever ended up in court I would want to appear before her husband, because he is a real softie having paid to replace the burglar alarm sensors in the garage with pet tolerant sensors rather than kill the mice in there.


    Andy B
  • We had one case where a rodent infestation was causing repeated callbacks ... kitchen/small lobby and downstairs bath only, flat roofed extension. The rats (definitely rats) were getting in through unknown entry points (I suspect missing bricks below ground level allowing access to the cavity). Anyhow the little buggers were stripping the T&E repeatedly... the poor lady had to have the entire ceiling taken down 3 times to clear out the damage and replace the cabling. The 3rd time, we replaced it with MI cable. Seems like massive overkill, but the beasts weren't actually causing any other problems!


    We built custom metal enclosures round the downlights, with the MI entering through a 20mm hole with gland, and then made off into the 'pot' a bit further on, which could then be connected to the flex of the LED dax lights.


    Hell of a complex way to go, and it cost the lady 3x the cost of doing T&E. But 2 yrs later and no callbacks

    Edit: the connection to the (unmolested) T&E in the main house was done with an adaptable metal box on the original external wall, in the new roofspace for the flat extension. they'd left us about 4" of undamaged cable to work with, which was plenty.
  • Given the previous damage, I was very careful to run the cables in Daughter's kitchen loft space along the walls and up and over the rafters. Theory is that the mice may run along the cables, but they won't want to eat them.


    Best explanation that I have found is that rodents only eat cables if they are in the way. They are not eating, they are trying to find their way through. So if they are burrowing under the insulation, they will go for the cables.


    Added benefit of my installation is that Daughter could put in as much insulation as she liked.
  • My understanding was that they strip the sheathing, (and then insulation) for nest making materials?  (not claiming to KNOW, but that's just what I have been told)


    What I have noticed, is that they will avoid permanently live cables...  The faults were always a SWITCHED line to either earth or neutral..  And when I was a mere kid and wired my own shed, (as we were allowed to do back then) I had a mouse issue, and noticed the same thing. They'd ignore the red wires, but the black wires were stripped bare!
  • The black cable insulation used to be made of liquorice, honestly!


    Andy B
  • I called a lady to come and have a look inside her consumer unit, saying I normally just cleared the bodies away without making a fuss.


    This was worth seeing, it was straight out of a cartoon, there was the skeleton of a mouse with its nose on the live busbar and the tip of its tail on the earth bar.


    RIP.

  • Sparkingchip:


    Are you going to have a bathroom cabinet with a mirror illuminated with LED lights operated by a movement sensor switch along with a demister pad behind the mirror, a built in shaver socket and Bluetooth speakers, so you can stream your favourite music from a mobile device whilst you bathe?




     

    ? Where can I get one????

  • Chris Pearson:

    Best explanation that I have found is that rodents only eat cables if they are in the way. 




    Not true. A few years ago I got my (electric) lawnmower out in the spring to mow the lawn for the first cut of the year only to find it wouldn't work because the cable between the motor and the switch on the handle had been gnawed through. And yes, it was black sheathing so probably the liquorice variety....

    Alasdair