Rat Control in Los Angeles, CA

Why a Los Angeles rat problem is not only a roofline problem

The rat most people picture here is the roof rat, and it earns the name. It climbs - fence lines, utility lines, palm fronds, tree limbs - and it enters a building near the top rather than burrowing under it. About half the jobs we solve in this basin are exactly that, which is why so much rodent work here is attic work.

The other half is not. A large share of what we find comes up through the plumbing instead: the sewer lateral, the waste line, the vent stack. A rat inside a cracked lateral is already in the structure without crossing the roof, the attic, or anything an exterior inspection would look at - which is why those jobs get missed, and why they come back after somebody seals the roofline.

So the attic is where we start, not where we stop. Scratching overhead at dusk, droppings along a joist and a chewed vent screen point at the roofline. Activity at ground level, or a problem that returns after a clean seal, points underneath it. We check both before anything is priced.

It also explains why bait stations around the perimeter of the house do so little. The rats are not walking past them. They are going in over your head, or under your floor.

What we do about it

The inspection maps the entry points first, because you cannot seal what you have not found.

Then every opening gets sealed in steel and mortar, before the trapping starts, so nothing new gets in while we work. Vents get proper screening, roofline gaps get closed, and the penetrations where pipes and conduit enter the building get packed. Overhanging limbs get flagged too, UC agricultural research puts tree limbs within six feet of a roof in reach of a roof rat, so a sealed house with a branch running onto it is a house waiting for the next one.

We trap what is left inside, traps and the Rat Vac system, not poison, so nothing dies inside a wall cavity where you cannot reach it.

Then the attic gets cleaned: droppings, nesting material and urine-soaked insulation out, the space disinfected, insulation replaced where it needs to be.