How a Grey Squirrel Reaches a Sudbury Loft
The trees, and how far one will jump
A squirrel does not need a branch resting on your tiles. It will cross several feet of open air from a garden tree, and where it cannot jump it climbs — a drainpipe, a rough flank wall, a thick climber, or a fence into a shed roof and up from there. The mature trees around the playing fields and the open ground nearby feed the gardens behind them, and a garage roof or the small tiled roof over a bay window makes a convenient landing stage on the way to the eaves.
Where the roof lets one in
The weak points are all at the edges of a roof rather than in the middle of it: the end of a timber fascia or soffit that has gone soft with rain, a tile lifted at the hip or along the verge, the joint where the roof of a rear extension runs into the main slope, and the plastic surround of a roof vent. Standing in the garden at first light and watching the roofline is the cheapest survey there is, and how squirrels get into a roof describes what you are looking for.
Settling What Is Actually Up There
Rats and mice use lofts too, they need a different service at a different price, and getting this wrong costs a fortnight. Two things separate them. Grey squirrels are active in daylight, loudest in the couple of hours after dawn and again before dusk, while rodents are heard once the house has gone quiet at night. And the sound has weight to it: running, dragging and the occasional thump, rather than light scratching. What squirrels sound like overhead and telling squirrels from rats go through the other clues; if it turns out to be rodents, rat control or mouse control in Sudbury is the booking instead.
The Order of Events
Each stage waits on the one before it, and the single most common mistake is closing the hole too early in the process.
- Confirm what is in the roof, and note what time of day you hear it
- Book the trapping service, saying which part of the ceiling the noise is over and when it started
- Leave the opening exactly as it is, and stay out of the loft while the work is running
- Wait until the roof space is confirmed quiet before anything at all is closed up
- Have the roofer make the repair, and renew any soft timber along the same edge while the ladder is up
- Cut back the branches that gave access to the roof, last of all
How long squirrel control takes depends on the roof, on how many ways in there are and on how settled the animals have become. A roof that has been used once tends to be tried again while the opening is still there, which is most of why squirrels return to the same loft.
Why the Hole Stays Open Until the End
Blocking it looks like the obvious first move, and it is the one to resist. A squirrel shut inside a roof will gnaw its way out, sometimes downwards through a ceiling and into a bedroom, and between late winter and the end of summer there may be young in a nest that cannot leave by themselves. Closing up at that point turns a contained problem into a damaged ceiling and a welfare one as well.
Who Does What, and What It Costs
Three separate jobs tend to get muddled into one. Trapping the grey squirrels using your roof space is ours, at £280. The repair to a fascia, a soffit, a tile or a roof junction is a roofer's or carpenter's, and it is worth having someone look and price it while the squirrels are still going in and out, so the work can follow straight on from the quiet loft. The trees are a tree surgeon's. Read what a lasting repair involves before you brief either trade. A tree in your own garden may be covered by a preservation order, so check with Brent Council before cutting starts, and trees on railway land or on a verge are not a householder's to touch at all.
What to Check Once the Loft Is Quiet
Look at what was damaged while the roof was occupied: insulation dragged into heaps, stored boxes opened up, pipe lagging pulled apart, the lid of a cold water tank. Chewed electrical cable is the part to act on rather than simply note — have an electrician check anything with damaged insulation. The damage squirrels cause in a loft and squirrels and wiring cover both sides of that.
Releasing a Grey Squirrel Is an Offence
The grey squirrel is classed as an invasive non-native species, and the law follows from that. Once one has been caught it is against the law to release it into the wild or to allow it to escape, so carrying a cage over to the playing fields and opening it is not something anyone may lawfully do, however kindly it is meant. The legal position on release states it plainly. For the borough-wide page see Squirrel Control Brent, the guide squirrels in Brent lofts covers the signs and the damage, and neighbouring Kenton has the same roofs and the same trees behind them.
