What Lives in an Edgware Garage
Ask what is in the garage of an Edgware semi and the answer is rarely a car. It is the overflow of the house: a chest freezer, bikes, the Christmas boxes, a rolled-up rug, bags of clothes waiting to go to a charity shop, paint tins, a spare mattress and the sack of bird seed. Out at the end of the garden there is usually a shed doing the same job on a smaller scale. None of that is a problem in itself, but storage that is packed tight and visited twice a year gives pests the two things they look for most, which are shelter and being left alone.
A garage used as a storeroom
An interwar garage is a plain brick or rendered box with a concrete floor, an up-and-over or side-hung door and, in many cases, a wall or a door shared with the house. Once it fills with cardboard boxes stacked straight onto the floor, the gaps between and behind them become dark, dry runs that nobody looks into. The gap under an old garage door lets in whatever is in the garden, and a side garage that opens into a utility room or kitchen puts that traffic one door away from the house.
Rats and mice in stored boxes
Mice can live in a garage for months before anyone notices, because the evidence is hidden behind the boxes rather than on a kitchen floor. Cardboard, old cushions and stored fabric give them nesting material, and seed, dog food and sacks of potatoes give them food. Rats tend to arrive from the garden side, digging under the shed or coming in beneath the garage door, and a garage where a freezer motor keeps one corner warm through winter is a comfortable place to settle. The first sign is often a chewed corner on a box that has not been moved since the last house move.
Sheds and outbuildings at the end of the garden
A timber shed on bearers leaves a hollow under its floor that is dry, dark and next to soil, which suits a rat burrow. Inside, stored garden cushions, compost bags and pots offer the same cover as the garage. In the gardens nearer Edgware Brook and Deans Brook there is more wildlife moving about at night, so a shed there is worth checking more often.
Wasps, spiders and moths in quiet corners
A garage or shed that stays shut from April to September is exactly the undisturbed space a queen wasp wants, and nests turn up hanging from the roof timbers or tucked under stored furniture. Spiders build up in the same places because the insects do, and the door into the house lets them wander indoors in autumn. Wool and feathers put into storage feed carpet moth and carpet beetle larvae, so a bag of old jumpers or a rolled rug brought back into the house can carry an infestation with it.
Storing things so pests get less out of it
- Lift boxes off the floor onto shelving and leave a gap along the walls so you can see behind them
- Swap cardboard for lidded plastic crates, especially for clothes, blankets and rugs
- Keep bird seed, pet food and anything edible in metal bins or thick tubs with tight lids
- Fit a brush strip or rubber seal along the bottom of the garage door and the door into the house
- Open the shed and garage in late spring and look up at the roof timbers for the start of a nest
- Keep the space under the shed clear so it stays open to light and easy to check
Telling us about the garage when you book
Whatever the pest, it helps to know whether there is a garage or outbuilding, whether it joins the house and roughly what is stored in it. A garage packed to the roof may need some boxes moved before anyone can reach the walls and corners. For rooms-priced treatments such as spiders and moths, a garage is counted as a room in the same way as a bedroom, so include it in the number you give us.
