Rodent Control in Lawrenceville

Lawrenceville runs along the Allegheny from the Strip District up toward Morningside, with Butler Street down the middle. A lot of the housing was built for mill and arsenal workers in the 1800s and early 1900s. Brick and frame row houses, shoulder to shoulder, small back yards, an alley behind every block.

That's great for neighbors. It's great for rodents too. Mice move house to house through shared walls and basements. Rats work the alleys from one set of cans to the next, and the Butler Street restaurants and bars add dumpsters and grease bins on top of it.

Mice coming through the party wall

In an attached house, your side of the wall is the job. The tech looks at the basement party wall, gaps where the joists sit in the brick, and pipes that pass between houses. Plenty of Lawrenceville basements still have stone foundations and an old floor drain, and both get checked. The proofing page explains what gets used.

Winter mice in the rows collect by the boiler and along the radiator pipes that run up through the floors. Hearing them in the wall of a second-floor bedroom? They probably came up a pipe chase from the basement. The fix is tracing that path and closing up where the pipes pass through each floor. Most of these jobs are mouse trapping plus sealing. Don't forget the front. A lot of these houses still have the old coal chute opening on the street side, sometimes just a board over it.

• Gaps in the shared basement wall
• Old coal chute openings on the street side
• Floor drains and basement toilets
• Back stoops over open dirt

Gut rehabs, Butler Street and the riverbank

Half the blocks in Lawrenceville have had a house gutted and rebuilt in the last few years. Demolition stirs up rats and mice and sends them next door. If a neighbor just started a rehab and now you've got mice, that's not a coincidence.

Lower and Central Lawrenceville sit on flat ground by the river, with long rows of houses and a grid of narrow alleys. Lots of cans and lots of basements close together means short trips for rats. Down by the river, rail lines and brush give them more cover. Upper Lawrenceville climbs toward Allegheny Cemetery and gets a little more yard, and those blocks see more mice coming in from the green space in the fall.

Keep trash in lidded cans and don't set out before 6 p.m. the night before. Rats in the alley or on public property go to 311. Rats under your stoop call for rat control. Butler Street restaurants usually set up regular commercial service. Across the 40th Street Bridge, Millvale deals with the same river rats.

Around Lawrenceville: Butler Street · Allegheny Cemetery · Arsenal Park · Doughboy Square · 40th Street Bridge · Upper, Central and Lower Lawrenceville (ZIP 15201)

Also serving South Side Flats and Slopes, Bloomfield, Squirrel Hill, Shadyside, Mount Washington, Polish Hill, Brookline, Mt. Lebanon, Millvale.