A Lap of a Sudbury House, Starting at the Drive
These houses were built with a front drive, a garage and a side passage, and most have gained an extension, a patio, decking or a bigger shed since. Walking the perimeter slowly and looking at nothing above waist height finds more in ten minutes than an hour spent inside a kitchen cupboard. The most common entry points is a useful list to have in your head before you set off.
The garage door, and the gaps at its sides
An up-and-over door is meant to sit on its threshold and rarely still does after thirty winters. The slab lifts, the door drops on its springs, a perished seal thins out, and there is a finger's width of light along the bottom or up one side where the frame has pulled away from the brickwork. Where the garage also has a connecting door into the hall or kitchen, that bottom edge counts for just as much. A small gap beneath a door that still hangs true can be closed inside the hour; a buckled door or a broken threshold slab wants a joiner or a builder first.
Air bricks along the rear and flank walls
An air brick ventilates the void under a suspended timber floor, so it has to carry on passing air whatever else is done to it. Never foam, tape or render one over — that invites damp and rot in the joists instead. A cracked clay grille, or one missing a corner, is replaced or covered with something that still lets air through freely, which is what proofing at air bricks describes.
Waste pipe holes and door thresholds
Where the kitchen sink waste, a bathroom overflow or a later heating pipe leaves the wall, the hole was cut wider than the pipe and packed with mortar that has since shrunk back from it. Those are sealed around the pipe rather than over it, so nothing that has to drain or vent ends up blocked. The back door and the side door into the passage are the other pair worth a look, since both wear at the bottom rail and at the foot of the frame. Proofing pipe and utility gaps covers how each of them is closed.
Shed and decking bases at the end of the garden
A shed on timber bearers or blocks has a shallow, dry space under the floor, and a deck laid over a joist frame has the same thing on a larger scale. Where the sides can be got at, closing the perimeter with mesh taken down into the ground and turned outwards stops anything digging its way in. Clear the pots, logs and bags from around the edges beforehand, because a base that cannot be reached cannot be sealed. A shed whose floor has already rotted through needs rebuilding before there is any point starting.
What Fits Into the Hour, and What Does Not
One hour of small-hole work, at £180, is what the service buys, and how far that goes depends entirely on the house. Here it might be the gap at the side of the garage door, a couple of pipe entries at the back wall, a cracked air brick and a worn threshold; or it might be the base of a shed and a deck, if that is where the trouble is. The priorities are agreed with you before anything begins.
Larger work belongs to another trade, and you will be told so plainly rather than having it forced into an hour: rehanging a dropped garage door, replacing a rotten door frame, relaying a broken threshold slab, repointing loose brickwork, rebuilding a shed base or putting up fencing. A drain fault is different again — a drainage contractor surveys the pipe and then either repairs it or fits a one-way blocker, as rats and drains explains.
Treat First, Then Proof
Proofing follows treatment rather than standing in for it. Seal a hole that is still in use and the animal gnaws a fresh one, usually somewhere worse, or dies inside a floor void where nobody can get at it. Book rat control or mouse control first, let the property go quiet, and have the gaps closed after that. Before or after treatment sets out why the order is not arbitrary, and how to tell which holes are actually in use helps you separate a live route from an old one.
Booking Proofing in HA0
What to tell us
Say whether it was rats or mice and when the treatment finished, then list what you already know about: the garage door, a side door, a broken air brick, a pipe hole, the shed, the decking. Mention whether the garage is attached and whether it opens into the house, and say what the garden backs onto.
Getting ready
Cut back the growth along the base of the rear wall, move the bins clear of the brickwork, empty the strip of floor along the garage walls, and pull pots and bags away from the shed and the edges of the deck. The hour runs whether or not a gap can be got at, so this is worth doing properly.
After the work
You will hear which gaps were closed, which were left and why, and what needs a builder, a joiner or a drainage contractor. Let us know if gnawing or new droppings appear next to one of the sealed spots. The borough-wide page is Rodent Proofing Brent, and Pest Control Sudbury covers the other pests around here.
