Insulation battleground: Me vs Mice
Here’s my sad story. I would appreciate help:
As I live on the campus where I teach, I get to live in my real home in Vermont only during the summers. Most of the winter, the pipes are drained and the heat is off–and the mice play! We’re very close to water, and we have a half crawlspace/half basement that is impossible to completely seal.
We have a well room in the basement that is insulated on sides with foam board, and in the ceiling joists with fiberglass insulation. A heater in the room keeps the water pipes in there from bursting.
Problem: The mice love to nest and crap in the insulation. I took it all down today, and was set to replace it, but thought, they’ll just do it again.
Solutions?
1) Should I try rigid foam in the ceilings? Can I stack two foam boards to increase the R value?
2) Should I try to seal all the joists (perhaps impossible, as an electric subpanel is in there and there are many holes), put in fiberglass, and then put sheetrock up to seal out the critters? This seems, to me, to be a good idea, but a practicle PITA because of the number of pipes going up to the ceiling.
3) Should I just sell the house… 🙂
Thanks for reading such a long note,
Purds
Replies
You might rock it, doing a quick and dirty job around the pipes and then stuff the spaces with steel wool.
BJ
Use the foam board, and then spray foam in any holes/crevices left.
It will be a minor pain to get to the plumbing, if there is a problem. later, but foam is not really all that hard to tear out if you have to. And then easily replaced again.
Quittin' Time
I would try to kill the mice, the little vermin. I hates mice. I do constant battle with them, and they will overrun you given a chance. You would not believe all the damage they have done here. Just the other day I go to get some bread for my morning toast, and one had tunneled inside. Now that mouse is toast - hehehe. Caught him in a trap. But for your situation, I would put out about 8 packs of d-con or similar poison baits in places where you know they frequent. You should change the baits as frequently as possible, since they lose effectiveness after a couple weeks. After the population is annihilated, you could cut down on the number of baits to four or so. Mice are not to be taken lightly. They are disease carriers, and cause monetary loss, too. Mouse nests can cause fires also. One got jammed in a friends refrigerator condensor fan and caused the fan motor to burn up, and ruined all the food inside. They were gone for the weekend, so that was a nasty mess, luckily no fire to the house.
i'm with mark... mice can get into anyplace they want to.. short of galvanized metal with soldered joints.. there is nothing they can get thru..
so ..kill them
poison & trap.. cellulose with borax.. eps foam treated with borax... vermin sprays installed with the insulation...make it UNPLEASANT for them to be there so they will go someplace elseMike Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
Borax won't hurt mammals. It paralyzes the digestive system of insects and prevents molds from spreading. - Mothballs make the mammals unwelcome though. Next trip up there sprinkle a couple boxes around in the effected areas and they'll be convinced they'd rather nest elsewhere instead of eating foam.
Excellence is its own reward!
Edited 9/1/2002 11:30:53 AM ET by piffin
Don't forget to wear a dust mask when you're cleaning up after the mice. The mouse crap can have some nasty stuff in it. Don't recall the name(s) of the airborne stuff you can get from them, but it ain't pretty.
"If all the nations in the world are in debt, where did all the money go?"
I think the disease/virus is 'Hanta Virus'. Several cases were reported in the Appalachian Trail many years ago and I think they were fatal cases.
If I am correct, the airborne dust of the dry droppings of mice can cause this.
Deaths from Hanta Virus on a reservation in Arizona/NM area a couple years back too (dropping related).
Anyone used one of these sonic-type rodent repellers? they emit a pitch higher than human or dog/cat ears can detect, but supposed to drive rodents out altogether. Been thinking about getting one instead of the constant trap/bait battle. some are $50-100, not sure if any really work well....
I think those sonic things are just a gimic. They work for a short time, then the mice get used to them and ignore them.
Kinda like a person living near railroad tracks that adjusts to the noise.
"If you must choose between two evils, pick the one you've never tried before."
I do occassional work at a large, remote, vacation home that is vacant much of the time. Mice and rats and squirrels have been a problem for years. Squirrels chew holes in the soffits and birdblocking creating a path for the rats. The mice come up through the drilled wiring chases (3/4" holes bored through the bottom plates and subfloor with a pair of 12 romex and the mice can squeeze by!).
Tried the sonic things...waste of money. Plugged holes with foam...waste of time and money (One or all of the above species chew right through the foam and then use it in their nests...to soak up their urine, I presume)... Installed metal flashings against the bird blocking...that worked, but there's more to do and it's costly.
What DOES work is bait stations that are checked and refilled regularly. Change brands of poison occasionally. Mix some extra goody in it once in a while, like peanut butter.
The commercial guys use factory made bait stations that are pretty efficient. I make my own (I'm a country bumpkin, too). Take two 12" lengths of 2" ABS pipe (or 3") and join them to an ABS Tee that allows you to thread a plug into the perpendicular leg of the Tee. Dump poison into the Tee with the plug removed, install the plug and place the device next to a wall where the little bastards are prowling. Check it often and keep it loaded. It works for me.
Poison staions work but then the little creatures crawl up into a hole in the wall and die to rot and stink where you can't find them to get rid of.Excellence is its own reward!
I'd rather have them dead and stinking instead of live and chewing and pooping and peeing. I had a stinker in my shed, found him dead and dried up under the mower today.
I too feel your pain. We also had flying squirrels. Bought a "rat Zapper". Also bought boxes of glue traps from exterm. companies. Good old fashion mousetraps work too . I reuse them Just take off creatures with needle nose pliers.Works good. I could tell you all loads of stories about the mice here at lake etc. Keep all my foodstufs in jars, cans, refrig etc. Hate those good for nothing creatures. "hava hart" traps I have BUT I HAVE NO HEART WHEN IT COMES TO PESTS. THey take a final trip when they come near me. Even though I am a woman I have no fear of them. Good luck
Yes, I know what you mean. I've had my dishtowels messed with, had the oats can chewed thru, sweet potatos chewed up, bread chewed over and over, had one run across my back when I was in bed, the rolling pin handle is all chewed up, found one dried up and stuck under the door trim when I put a new door in, had one living in my car and it chewed up and ruined everything in the glove compartment. Also had a squirrel or rat make a nest on top of the computer in my van and caused it to go bad, that cost me a bunch to have fixed. My dog kills rats if she can catch them. The stray cats kill mice, but my dog will kill cats too. I have about 700 acres of corn behind my house, so that causes a lot of the vermin problems. I kill them any possible way I can. No mercy here either!
Had a couple of stinkers in the walls, etc. I'm now using glue traps with great results, a little unnerving sometimes, but waaaaaaaay better than the smell.
Mike
Purds,
Boy so I know your pain. I work at a school, have a house in Vermont and live in a house in NJ on a lake! Oddly enough we have used to have a big time problem with them in Vermont (we heat the house all year) we solved that problem with poison. It gets real nasty when they die in the walls and start to rot. The smell will knock you out but if you do it just before you close up the house, hopefully they will die over the winter. They will drive one nuts. Our house here in NJ, we are doing some remodeling projects now. The fiberglass in the rim joist area was completely eaten and used as nests and the mouse droppings were pretty bad. (yes they can carry diseases) wear a mask, vacuum up the droppings and then spray with a mixture of water and bleach or hydrogen peroxide works good too.
We got cats hear to help get rid of the mice and other critters. They did but they also could not get too them everywhere. We ended up using a small haveahart trap to get rid of the ones the cats couldn't get to.
We also bought one of those electronic pest products. It worked for the squirrels but never tried it with mice.
Hope that this helps
Bill:
Thanks for the ideas. Sorry I did not respond sooner--no computer access for a while here in VT. Yes, we have a cat who comes up with me in the summer, and he does a great job--dead things from him almost every morning for the first few weeks. But, it's over the winter that they come back.
I've pretty much settled on using foam board to insulate the well room ceiling (I've delayed until the last possible moment--school starts next week). I am hoping to find foam board that's been treated to deter ants/termites. I will use spray foam to fill cracks. I need to insulate the well room to keep the pipes warm, though the water and heat gets shut off to the rest of the place in the winter when we're not around.
I have used the standard mouse traps in the basement during the winter, but they all fill up and before I get up there to replace them, new mice show. It will be an ongoing battle, I see.
Thanks for everyone's ideas--the mask will be on, the shop vac sucking everything up!
Purds
PS: Which school in Jersey? My mother-in-law used to work at Peddie.
Edited 8/28/2002 11:04:46 PM ET by Purds
They make a heating wire to prevent freeze ups, it has a thermostat in it which you wrap around your pipes that you don't want to freeze and it kicks in at a certain temp. That may work for you. Also for the mice I have seen a multiple live trap somewhere that just keeps collecting mice, not sure if that would work for you or not.
I work at a school in Sussex County
All the best
Bill
Sussex County? I've trimmed some of your neighbors' houses, and my cousins live down the road from you.
Andy Engel, The Accidental Moderator
Small email world huh?
Job's finally done! Used 2" foamboard (guys at three different building supplies stores looked at me like I was an alien when I asked about "treated" foam board--guess it's not used much up here and couldn't get down to RI, where I know they have a place that sells it). Was a PITA cutting around all the pipes and some wiring, but it all went in. Even doubled the layer to get closer to R-20 than the R-10 of one board. Used Great Stuff to fill the cracks.
No place left for the mice unless they tunnel through it!
Thanks for all the ideas. Mask was on the whole time.
Purds
Edited 8/30/2002 9:54:45 PM ET by Purds
We're currently cleaning up an old shed on our property.
Is there a recommended or best way to DISINFECT a fairly
large area ? The floor is 20 ft by 20 ft, about 400 sq ft in all.
We're vacuuming up the mouse droppings after
sprayng them with LYSOL. After they're vacuumed up, the old
unfinished oak floor is again sprayed with LYSOL.
Is there a better or easier way ?
Thanks.
Ed
It's a shed, right ?
Load up a pump type garden sprayer with water and laundry detergent. The kind that has bleach in it. Spray the heck out of everything until everything is good and wet.
Let it sit only long enough to know that the water/detergent has had a chance to really soak through all the dirt/droppings, etc.
Now, drag a garden hose in, and rinse everything down until you know that you have rinsed out all the detergent, and dirt and dropping, etc...
Leave the doors and windows open for a few days, and yer good to go.
The biggest danger from those droppings is breathing in the dust from them. My way, there is no dust. And the detergent is a natural anti-biological, and the bleach even more so. Not much in the way of virus, etc, can live through a good soaking application of that sort.
Quittin' Time
Formaldehyde fumigation. Uses formalin added to a bowl of potassium permanganate and creates volumes of noxious fumes - do not breathe them - but works amazingly well, verified by sampling and bacterial cultures of some experiments we did at a fish hatchery. It's a standard technique for disinfecting chicken barns in factory scale poultry operations.
) Should I just sell the house... :-)
Perhaps you could put together some kind of rental or time share deal for the months you're away.
-- J.S.
What part of VT? You might be able to find some students to rent to, law students if near S. Royalton, college in a couple of other places.
We're down near Brattleboro. But, I was once a college student renting a house off-campus, and I am not proud of the way we treated that poor structure. Not sure I want to go that route.
One of you suggested spraying the insulation. How does that work?
And, of course, I'd love to use one of the sonic things if it worked, but it sounds too good to be true.
Purds
Back in the Four Star Theater days, they had a kind of mouse trapping thing that consisted of trays maybe 1/4" deep by 4" x 12" full of an extremely sticky substance. The idea was that the mouse would try to walk thru it, and get stuck. I know I sure stepped in enough of the damned things in the dark, and I was only there for a week.
-- J.S.
Try Waffen Cakes.... They are available at most feed stores.... they are like candy to the mice... they eat them, then they have to search for water... after the first drink....they die..where they drank...
Most of the time they are outside the house...
If you don`t have a feed store near by, some good hardware stores carry the product.......they come in small 2x3in. packages, easy to place, and generally most domistic pets will avoid them..... M
I'll try tractor supply. I've seen them, but I usually use dcon or similar + traps. Might be just the ticket.
Mark:
Waffen Cakes is the name brand? I'll go look this week.
Purds