Rats! We found this little guy inside our home after a cold snap (well, cold for San Diego) and knew this was just the tip of the iceberg. He was easily relocated out to the edge of the yard. This wouldn’t be the last…
A few days later, another rat by our inside garage door. Ugh, Houston, we have a problem! A call to our pest control vendor was made, and we were on the schedule to have him check the garage. As it turns out, they had chewed their way through the corner of the garage door/seal interface. The garage was a mess, and the odor of rodent was very evident with one warm weather day. We have two problems on our hands: stopping the ingress, and cleaning the mess up. Hantavirus exists in San Diego County, and you can’t be too careful.
We pulled back as much from the walls as possible, and what a mess! Multiple rats and mice were found, and the urine and feces was abundant. The downside of our epoxy floor: the traces of the rodents blended in with the pattern of the floor to our eyes, and we didn’t notice until we had the mess we had.
We were going to go scorched Earth on this issue, and found this company called Xcluder that seemed to be pretty new on the scene for home improvement supplies. We bought three of their products, one for the door seals at the edges, one for the garage door itself, and their bulk mesh for filling in gaps.
The mesh came with gloves and shears, and it is nasty stuff! Lots of sharp metal fibers embedded into a poly felt blend.
Where our pest vendor found the ingress: they had chewed through the door and floor seals. Stainless steel sheet metal with adhesive backing go to the floor to block that path, and fresh caulking was added as well.
The bulk mesh was stuffed in between the garage door rail and garage door frame, to stop ingress in that gap.
The garage door bottom seal had the poly blend, with an additional stainless steel mesh. This stuff was tough to cut with tin snips, and it would have to give rodents a run for their money.
The bottom seal was tedious, and required two people to thread the material in the door frames provided. I has a long comb on the inside as well.
The seal was rather tall for the first week or so, as the material inside needed to form a memory. This is much tougher than it had been before! There was some small chewing action in the same area, but they gave up quickly. So far, no new activity has been discovered. This was well worth the $300 or so for all three products.