Rat Removal Cost
Sometimes the plans we make in this life do not always go quite as we expected as many of us know and understand, life has a tendency to throw a couple curveballs our way now and again. These curveballs life throws at us can take many forms, whether an unexpected accident that leads to an emergency room visit, a car breaking down that we desperately needed to keep working, a natural disaster that destroys house and home, or even something such as unexpected intruders coming into our home uninvited. These are just a few examples of some of the things we face in life, some more than others, they all seem quite different in their own respect but the one thing they all have in common, they all cost us money from out of our pocket.
Today we want to explore when dealing with unexpected intruders in the home, and no we are not talking about a surprise visit from your in-laws, but from critters better known as rats that come and set up shop above you without even bringing a house warming gift before they move in. We want to inform and educate the public on the ways of dealing with these critters in the attic but we also want to explain how much money rat removal can cost a homeowner and what you can do now to help keep some money in your bank account.
When rats come into the home, they come to stay, they never plan on leaving if they are not forced to and can quickly become a big problem to a homeowner. Rats leave droppings everywhere which can turn the attic and ductwork into a health hazard, they chew on electrical wires which can cause a fire hazard or need for repair, they damage soffit and siding on the exterior of a home, and most noticeably they run around the attic all night keeping those living in the home awake and wondering what is causing the stampede in the attic and the walls. In previous posts, we have briefly talked about some of the areas on the exterior of a home that provide entry points for rats and other wildlife to get into the attic space and then into the rest of the home, and we will touch on those again in this post, but we wanted to focus more on informing the public on how much this can cost, what to look out for when hiring a wildlife removal company so you don’t get ripped off, and what types of common services these companies offer and the going rates for the services.
Let us first begin with taking a look at the first step in the process when removing rats from the attic, which is called the seal up exclusion. In this step after you have chosen a legitimate company to hire, a technician will perform construction repairs on the outside of the home in order to seal the house from anything coming in or going out, this is very important because only after this step can you effectively trap the critters that have already gotten inside. This is by far the first and most important step in the process of ridding yourself of these unwanted guests for good but can also be the most expensive, so watch out and make sure you educate yourself on exactly what needs to be done. Many people believe that a flat rate applies to these types of services and that couldn’t be farther from the truth when estimating seal up exclusions, rates of service will always depend on the house and how it was built.
In our experience, most people don’t understand just how many entry points can potentially be on a single home, with larger homes usually offering more entry points than smaller homes but not necessarily, it all depends on the construction.
The type of roof that a home has and the number of roof returns, the type of soffit construction, the number of electrical conduits and ac Freon lines going into the home, as well as additions to the home such as a back porch or lanai can all provide a way for the critters to get inside and all must be dealt with. When removing rats from an attic, you have to seal up every single entry point, if you do not then you are just wasting money, rats are intelligent and they have a very strong will to live, and if you leave one way they can still get in and out, they will find it and will continue to do their things until you fix it, so never hire a company that just wants to fix one entry point and then be done, every single entry point must be addressed or you will never fix the problem.
Now that we know that there are no flat rates for exclusion work, let’s explore how a wildlife removal company looks at a home when doing estimates. When I used to show up to a home and greet the customer, the first thing I always wanted to do what take a look around the outside perimeter of a home to get a feel for how much actual work was needed to seal up the home properly. What type of material is the roof made of and how many returns were there on the roof? How steep was the roof and was there any special equipment or safety gear that was going to be needed in order to reach some of the areas that needed to be sealed up? Are there any additions to the home that could have a potential entry point? Was the house on stilts with a crawl space or was it on a concrete slab? How was the ac and electrical run into the home, did it go through an outside wall or was it all buried underground? These are all categories that an estimator will or should take note of when perform an on-site estimate. We could go into much more detail on how estimators think and price out jobs but we don’t want to get tied up in the nitty gritty, what we want is for you to understand that this is a dangerous job, and this type of work is not easy and has to be priced appropriately, prices will differ from company to company and so will the quality of work, which is why we always suggest getting many detailed estimates and comparing them before making any type of hiring decision. As a visual aid, we have made a rough chart to show what factors that go into pricing a rat removal job and a seal up exclusion, these are not exact prices as that can only be given after on-site estimates but you will at least be able to understand what drives a price up on a particular homes roof type only. This basic chart looks at two categories, the number of roof returns a home has and the steepness of the roof itself. For simplicities sake let’s assume that each home has the same number of roof returns and the same steepness to the pitch of the roof, this chart shows what is going to cost a customer more and what would cost the least amount.
The height of the columns represents money and therefore the taller a column is, the more money a company will usually charge. We can clearly see that metal and tile roofs will cost the most money to seal up with shingle being the least expensive, given that each roof has the same number of returns and the same steepness. Remember that if you compared an extremely steep shingle roof with a relatively flat tile roof, the shingle roof would cost much more due to the inherent danger of being on a steep roof. But for this visual aid, all roofs are the same to give us a baseline comparison.
As mentioned above, no company will be able to give you an exact price for performing rat removal in the attic without first coming and doing an on-site inspection to look at the roof and the exterior perimeter, and we highly suggest that if they want to give you some price over the phone, hang up immediately and do not hire that company as that is a major red flag, you wouldn’t hire a roofer to replace your roof if he never came out and took a look at it would you? The same rule applies to wildlife removal companies as they are often doing work on your roof. Now that we have an elementary understanding of what causes different homes to be more or less expensive to work on, we can look at the next part of the job which comes directly after a seal up exclusion is performed on the home, and this is the trapping phase of the job.
The trapping phase is much easier to explain as it is very common for wildlife removal companies to have a flat rate for trapping animals in and around your home after you have hired them. At this point during the job most of the hard work has already been completed and now it is a matter of coming back and monitoring the job site, removing any rats that have been trapped, and making sure that the construction work that has been done on the home still looks good and undisturbed. Trapping rats in the attic after and exclusion usually takes a competent wildlife company about 7-10 days but can be longer or shorter depending on how bad the problem was to start with, occasionally the problem is solved in the first couple days of trapping and other times it can go on for weeks. This is the primary reason that companies charge a flat rate for trapping which usually ranges anywhere from $200-$500 depending on how many times the company is going to come back out to the house to remove trapped animals and perform on-going inspections. The customer at this point is paying the company for their time as the construction work has already been done and now it is just a matter of constantly checking whatever types of traps are in the attic and removing anything that gets caught until all animals have been removed.
We will remind you that whenever you sign a contract with a rat removal company, the trapping phase of the job is not indefinite and there will come a time when the trapping will end. This is something to discuss with them before signing anything. The industry standard is a company coming back out to the house 3-4 times to check the traps but everything is negotiable, some homeowners even save themselves money by doing the trapping themselves but this is not recommended as if they are unable to catch every critter in the attic, then they will have to spend more money to have the company come back out and perform another service, it is just better to the let the pros do it while they are already out at your home.
There are many more services that wildlife removal companies offer in relation to rat removal in the attic but we will save those for a more in depth post about attic services whenever we have a chance to compile information and post it out for the public to read. This post was meant to give a brief description of some of the items that drive pricing in the exclusion and trapping industry such as roof construction. It is our hope that this has been helpful to you and will at least give you an idea of where your own home will fit into the pricing sheet, unfortunately a large house can come with a price, especially when dealing with rat removal. We always suggest that you educate yourself on these matters by asking lots of questions whenever getting estimates on your home, ask the company what exactly they are going to fix, what type of materials they will use, how long will the trapping phase last, what is the protocol if they are unable to remove all the animals from the attic, and warrant information as well. We look forward to putting more information on the web for you all and taking a closer look inside the attic space and what you steps you can take to have total peace of mind.