The Front of the House: Vaults, Coal Holes and the Path
The path between the gate and the front steps is often a lid rather than ground. Underneath it is the vault that served the rooms at the bottom of the house, reached from above by a round iron plate — the coal hole — set into the paving. Those plates crack, rust thin or get swapped for a slab that does not quite fit, and a vault opening into the house through an old doorway or a gap beside a pipe gives a route that starts at the pavement. Where the surround is solid the opening can be covered; where the brickwork has gone soft, it needs making good before sealing is worth anything.
Lightwell gratings and the door at the bottom of the steps
The sunken area in front of a lower-ground window gathers leaves and wrappers, and the metal grating over it at pavement level works loose at a corner soon enough. Below it, the door onto that area takes weather from every direction, and its bottom rail and the foot of the frame are usually the softest timber on the building. Small work at the base of a sound door is straightforward; a rail that has rotted wants a joiner before anything else. The gap a rat can use is smaller than the one you are probably looking at.
Air bricks at garden level
The air bricks along the back and side walls keep air moving under the original floorboards, and they have to go on doing it. Filling one with foam or a brick swaps a rodent problem for damp and rot in the joists, which is slower and dearer to put right. A cracked clay grille is replaced with an intact one, or covered with fine metal mesh that still passes air. Stopping rats at air bricks weighs up what can go over one.
Bin Stores, Studio Bases and the Back of the House
A bin store built into the front garden is a timber box standing on soil with food inside it, and the gap between its base and the ground is as much of an invitation as the bins are; a compost bin sitting straight on earth is the same idea. At the back, a garden studio or a deck on bearers leaves a dry void that no amount of sealing indoors will touch — closing it means a mesh skirt taken down into the ground, which is work for whoever built the thing. Inside, the openings that matter are the ones the services made: where a waste pipe leaves the back wall, where heating pipes drop through a floor, and behind the kickboards of a fitted kitchen. Proofing pipe and utility gaps describes that work, and the most common entry points makes a good list to walk round with.
Treat First, Then Proof
The order matters more in a tall house than almost anywhere, because there is so much hollow space in one. Seal the route a rat or a mouse is still using and it works sideways into a floor void or upwards behind the boxing, gnaws itself a new exit, and may die somewhere nothing can reach. Book rat control or mouse control first and the proofing once things have gone quiet; before or after treatment gives the reasoning.
What the Hour Covers
Up to an hour of work on small holes that can be got at. On a house here that realistically means a damaged air brick or two, the foot of a garden-level door, a pipe entry through the back wall and the openings behind a run of kitchen units — how many of them depends on what has to be shifted first.
Outside it sit rebuilding brickwork, hanging a new door, replacing a lightwell grating, re-laying a path over a vault and anything needing a ladder at roof height. Drains are a different trade again: a cracked pipe under a Victorian house is surveyed, then repaired or fitted with a one-way blocker by a drainage contractor, as rats and drains explains. You will be told plainly when what the house needs is a builder rather than an hour of sealing.
Booking Proofing in NW6
What to tell us
Say whether it was rats or mice and when the treatment finished, then walk the outside of the house as you book rodent proofing: the coal hole plate, the lightwell and its grating, the door at the bottom of the steps, air bricks, the bin store, pipes coming through the rear wall. If yours is a flat in a converted house, say which parts you can arrange work on, because the front area, the vaults and the shared stairs normally belong to the freeholder.
Getting ready
Clear the lightwell, move bins and planters back from the walls, unlock the side gate, and empty the cupboard under the sink along with anything stacked in front of a vault or cellar door. An hour spent shifting boxes is an hour not spent sealing.
After the work
You will hear which gaps were closed and what needs another trade. If fresh gnawing or droppings show up beside a sealed spot, tell us, because telling a live hole from an old one takes a second look. Rodent Proofing Brent covers the same work across the borough, and the houses of neighbouring Kilburn have much the same list of weak points.
