Rats Can Cause Serious Damage To Arizona Homes

Imagine what an 800-pound gorilla or wild tiger could do if left alone and locked in your home.  Can you picture the widespread ruin that would be your home? Before finding the frozen meat or pantry full of treats, your walls would be wrecked, windows shattered, and just think about the mess on the carpets and floors!  The damage would be immense and you would never want to return home again—at least not until your contractor, home cleaners, and carpet care professionals finished a marathon effort to restore your home to its original shape.

It doesn’t always take an angry gorilla or wild tiger to make ruin of your home.  Anyone with young children or unruly pets knows a thing or two about annoying messes and costly home damage!  So what could a reasonably small, relatively lightweight rat possibly do to damage a home?  Having seen the aftermath of a rodent infestation first-hand, the professionals at Rodent Proof would tell you they would invite the gorilla and tiger in together and feed and groom them before they allowed even a single rat into any home.  Rats chew, chew, and chew more until they ultimately ruin whatever is in their path.  They chew and tear building nests, foraging for food, and making paths to come and go.  Roof rats and packrats also leave behind a path of feces or droppings, as well as a runway of urine throughout an infested home.

Damage to homes by rats can be anywhere from a few hundred dollars to repair upwards of tens of thousands of dollars to restore and repair homes that have been damaged by Arizona packrats and roof rats.  In Arizona alone, the cost of annual rat damage to homes is in the millions of dollars.  Imagine for a moment what the price tag would be if all of your home’s wiring needed to be replaced, the cost of re-insulating your entire attic, or the time, labor, and cost associated with the removal and proper cleaning of rat droppings and feces from you home’s walls, ceiling, attic, garage, basements, sheds, and even in your kitchen.

What Exactly Can Rats Damage?

Pack rats and roof rats in Arizona will chew through nearly anything in their path in their search for food and shelter.  These destructive rodents are commonly found in a home’s attic space where they are safe from predators and harm.  While in an attic, they often will chew through plastic, rubber, paper, and wood.  This means that all of the insulation, wiring, water plumbing, and even the roof stand in the path of rat destruction.  Rats tend to find doorbell, telephone, and thermostat wiring first.  These wires are insulated and coated with substance that roof rats and packrats are attracted to and will tear to shreds.  Rats will also chew the outer shielding of high voltage wires exposing an attic to dangerous fire hazards.  While a doorbell line can easily be repaired, a house fire can be a devastating consequence of rodent damage.

In their search for water, pack rats and roof rats will target plastic water lines, which are often plumbed through a ceiling to the icemaker of a refrigerator.  After chewing through the line, water is free to run through the ceiling, walls, and floors of your home.  Water damage is not only costly, but also can lead to mold growth and other expensive damage.

While infesting a home, rats will urinate to mark the path in and out for other rats to find shelter and food.  The rat’s feces build up marking the entire area with black droppings.  A heavily infested home could have several hundred pounds of droppings above a ceiling. Often times that is the ceiling just above a home’s kitchen.

How Do Rats Enter Your Home?

Rats find their way into Arizona homes in a variety of ways.  Most commonly these rodents can crawl through openings in the roof, walls, cracks in doors, or any other opening into a home the small size of a quarter.  Roof rats and packrats usually enter a home as easily as if invited by the homeowner.  While no builder should be held liable, its clear that building standards today in the state of Arizona do not take into account the presence of rodents while planning to erect homes.  Often there are gaps left in eaves, overhangs, vents, and other areas to the homes structure that are barely noticeable to the untrained eye, which will allow rodents to enter a home.  As long as there is a single point of entry to come and go, these destructive rodents will continue to damage a home until they have been caught and all of the home’s openings have been properly sealed by a licensed and qualified wildlife and pest management professional, such as Rodent Proof LLC.