Why These Roofs Are Easy to Get Into
Two things about a house of this age make the difference. The eaves overhang deeply, which gives a sheltered edge that stays out of the weather and out of sight from the pavement, and the timber behind that overhang softens quietly over decades wherever a gutter joint has been dripping. A squirrel does not need the board to have gone; it needs one corner of it soft enough to work at.
Getting up there takes no effort at all. A bay roof makes a step halfway, a garage or an extension roof makes another, and a drainpipe or a thick growth of ivy does the rest where there is no branch close enough to jump from. How squirrels get into a roof describes what each opening looks like from the ground, and a quarter of an hour watching the roofline at first light tells you more than guessing from indoors.
What a converted loft leaves behind
Converting the roof does not remove the roof space; it divides it. Behind the knee walls of the new rooms are long eaves voids reached through small doors, and above the flat ceiling there is often more space again. Those voids are exactly where a squirrel settles, which is why people with a converted loft sometimes insist there is nowhere for anything to be. Say how many of those doors and hatches you have when you book, because each one is somewhere that has to be looked at.
The Order the Work Has to Run In
Settling whether it is squirrels at all
Squirrels keep daytime hours. They are loudest in the first hour or two of light and again before dusk, and they weigh enough that what carries through a ceiling is footfall and dragging. A rodent is a fraction of that weight and works at night, once the rooms below have emptied and the heating has gone off. Telling squirrels from rats in a loft adds the droppings and the damage, and if it turns out to be the other, rat control or mouse control in Dollis Hill is the booking instead.
The £280 trapping service
Trapping deals with the grey squirrels using your roof space, and what it involves and what is asked of you will be gone through when you arrange it. In general it means leaving anything set up alone, keeping the hatch shut and keeping children and pets out of the roof space until you are told otherwise.
Making sure the roof space is empty
Nothing gets sealed while the roof is still in use. An animal closed inside sets about making its own exit, and the hole it cuts is often on the underside of the roof rather than the edge, which puts it in a bedroom ceiling. For a long stretch of the year there may also be a litter up there that cannot yet follow the adult out. How long squirrel control takes depends on the roof, on how many ways in there are and on how settled they have become.
Closing the gap, and the branches last
The repair on a roof like this is roofing work rather than a tube of filler: a new length of soffit or fascia, tiles refixed at a verge, flashing dressed back in. Have a roofer look at it while the squirrels are still coming and going, so the exact board or tile can be pointed out to them and the work can begin the moment the roof space is signed off as empty. Branches come after that, and only the trees that are yours — a tree in the park is the park's, and a garden tree may be covered by a preservation order, so check with Brent Council before arranging anything substantial. What a lasting repair involves is worth a look before you make that call.
What to Check Once the Loft Is Quiet
- Cable with damaged insulation, which is an electrician's job before anything else is decided
- Insulation dragged into heaps, and stored boxes opened up at the corners
- The cover on a cold water tank, and anything that has been fouled
- Whether an eaves cupboard behind a knee wall has been used as well as the open roof space
What damage squirrels cause in a loft covers the rest of it, and the Brent squirrel guide goes into the signs in more detail.
When the House Has Been Divided Into Flats
Plenty of the larger houses here are two or three flats now, and the roof space above the top one is almost always the freeholder's rather than the top-floor resident's, whatever the hatch on the landing suggests. Put in writing what you are hearing and when, and say in the same message that a repair will be needed once the roof is empty, because that part is certainly theirs to arrange. Where a pair of houses shares a roof, the wall between two old roof spaces does not always carry up to the underside of the tiles, so a word with the neighbour saves two half-finished jobs.
Releasing a Grey Squirrel Is an Offence
The grey squirrel is not native here and is classed in law as an invasive non-native animal. That makes it an offence to put one back into the wild after catching it, or to let it escape, so taking a cage down the hill and opening it in the park is not something anyone can lawfully do, however kindly it is meant. The legal position after trapping sets out what the offence covers. Squirrel Control Brent covers the borough, neighbouring Willesden has the same trees along its terraced rooflines, and Pest Control Dollis Hill has the other pests in NW2.
