From the Park Trees to a Preston Roofline
A branch does not have to touch the house. Given a launching point within a few feet — a garden tree, a flat garage roof, a hedge grown up hard against the wall — a grey squirrel will make the jump, and where there is nothing to jump from it climbs a downpipe, a rough flank wall or a thick growth of ivy instead. The small tiled roof over the bay window makes a convenient halfway landing on the way up to the gutter.
Where a tiled roof edge gives way
These roofs are tiled, with generous overhanging eaves and long runs of timber fascia and soffit behind the gutter. The weak spots are the ends and the joints: a soffit board softened by years of water spilling from a blocked gutter, the mitre at a hip, the verge on a gable, the point where the roof of a rear extension or a garage runs into the main slope, and the surround of a plastic roof vent. A loft conversion adds more of them, because the void left behind the new eaves is often exactly where the noise turns out to be. How squirrels get into a roof helps you work out which one is yours, and standing in the garden at first light watching the gutter line costs nothing.
Squirrel, Rat or Something Smaller?
Worth settling before you book, because each is a different service. Grey squirrels work in daylight and are busiest in the first hours after sunrise and again late in the afternoon, and the sound has weight to it — running, dragging, the occasional thump that stops a conversation. Rats and mice are heard once the house has gone quiet at night, and what they make is lighter and faster. What squirrels sound like overhead and telling squirrels from rats cover the droppings and the damage too, and knowing whether squirrels are in the loft is the short version. If it turns out to be rodents, rat control in Preston or mouse control is the booking you want.
What the £280 Trapping Service Covers, and What It Does Not
The figure is £280 for the trapping of the grey squirrels using your roof space, and it does not move with the size of the loft, the number of animals or whether the house is a semi or detached. What is involved, and what is asked of you while it runs, is explained when you arrange the visit; in practice it means keeping the hatch shut and leaving the roof space undisturbed. The building work afterwards is not part of it.
Who Does Which Part
- You: access on the day, a closed hatch, nothing moved about in the loft, and a word with the house next door
- Us: the trapping, and telling you when the roof space is no longer being used
- A roofer: the repair — soffit and fascia ends, a tile at a hip or verge, the junction where an extension roof meets the slope
- A tree surgeon: cutting back a branch that reaches the roof, once the repair has been done
- Brent Council: asked first about a street tree, or any tree that may be protected
Have the roofer look and price the work while the animals are still going in and out, so the exact spot can be pointed at. A repair in the wrong place changes nothing at all, and closing the way back in is worth reading before you brief anybody.
Why Nothing Is Sealed Until the Roof Is Quiet
A squirrel shut inside a roof will chew its way out, and the route it picks is sometimes downwards through a ceiling into a bedroom. There may also be young in a nest that cannot leave on their own, which is not a situation to create behind a board. So the opening stays exactly as it is until the loft is confirmed empty, and only then does the roofer go up. How long squirrel control takes depends on the roof and on how many are using it; the time of year shifts things as well, and the calendar for that sits on Pest Control Preston.
Releasing a Grey Squirrel Is Against the Law
Grey squirrels are not native here, and the law treats them as an invasive species. Once one has been caught it is an offence to release it into the wild or to allow it to escape, so carrying a cage up to the park and opening it is not a lawful option, however kindly it is meant. The legal position after trapping states it plainly.
Going Up Once the Loft Is Clear
Take a torch up when you are told the roof space is empty. Insulation gets dragged into heaps and thinned where it is needed most, stored boxes and soft furnishings are pulled apart for bedding, and the lid of an old water tank is worth a look. Anything gnawed on a cable is for an electrician to judge rather than you — squirrels and wiring explains why that part is taken seriously, and the damage squirrels cause in a loft lists the rest. A roof that has been used once will be tried again while the way in is still open, which is most of why squirrels return to the same loft.
For squirrels elsewhere in the borough see Squirrel Control Brent and the Brent squirrel guide. Neighbouring Wembley has houses of the same age with the same roofline.
