Technology93 mins ago
Rats - Following On From Pastafreak
We live next door to a row of 6 Housing Association dwellings. The Septic Tank for their 6 houses is situated immediately behind our garage. They have no access to it through high fencing, nor do we. This is, of course, a safe paradise for rats.
Over the years when we have spotted rats, we have spent quite a lot of money on putting down poison on their runs into their Ritz Hotel enclosure.
After Xmas I went into our garage to discover that they have migrated and burrowed underground, to come up in our garage behind our new oil boiler and freezer - there is aggregate scattered everywhere and you can see the tunnel entrance. 2Kkg of spuds had disappeared (I later found them with knawed marks). So I bought a plastic lidded box for veg..
I am, however left with rats (aided and abetted by housing association) in my garage. It has cost about £15 to kill this lot, but the wiring on the boiler is now at risk.
I have rung the Housing association, but the person concerned is always in a meeting and doesn't ring back.
Any advice please? They are not my rats, the H.A. is to blame. No-one here can reach them.
Answers
No best answer has yet been selected by jourdain2. Once a best answer has been selected, it will be shown here.
For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.I get what Bednobs means about "my/your" rats. However, I suspect that the septic tank is in this fenced off area and it is probably very overgrown in there. Additionally, there will probably also be an accumulation of rubbish. The septic tank itself will probably also give off warmth. If the area is not kept tidy and maintained, it becomes a "rat hotel" (I had precisely this problem with a property I moved into in 2017). Rats breed with alarming regularity - we have the devil's own job of keeping on top of them here (although the cats are very good at catching the baby ones).
The potential lack of maintenance is probably contributing to this problem and the HA needs to deal with the issue on their land. Obviously Jourdain will need to deal with it on her land, but unless a joint concerted effort is made the problem will not go away.
I actually managed a short phone call to the lady concernedin this and she is 'activating a process' which will eventually sent out an assessor and environmental control person, who may set traps etc. . This is all very well, but it needs to be ongoing.
I think I've killed them all for now, but what about the damage to our garage floor and the need for re-establishment of aggregate around the edges. Then it probably needs liquid concrete pouring in. I can't do this, neither can Mr. J2 (currently in hospital). If we have to get someone in it will cost us again - and ssomeone else is housing the rats which have caused us damage. This surely can't be right.
Over the 10 years we have lived here, we must have spent well over a couple of hundred pounds on rat poison, because no-one else (Housing Association is responsibly party) has been doing anything.
Surely it is their turn to sort it out and make good the damage caused by rats from their property?
Surely
Surely rats are wild animals and are not domestic pets which are being allowed by negligence to wander to other people's properties? I once had rats wandering along the river behind our house and then settling under my shed. I got rat controllers involved and paid for it myself. It's said that everybody in the UK is permanently within a few metres of a rat. I'm not sure that you can blame everyone close to your boundary as being responsible for rats on your property. I hope the Council can help you. Good luck.
Thanks, Atheist. Today my neighbour told me that his minature dachsies can get in there and his last dog died from rat poison! I've guaranteed that I didn't chuck any into the enclosure and stuck to the boiler area (they were the ones I wanted after all)but I'm now so worried that the rats may have dragged some back............
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