Basement Rodent Control in Pittsburgh Homes

Anybody who's lived in an old Pittsburgh house knows the basement is its own world. Stone or block walls. A dirt crawl space under the back addition. Floor drain, toilet in the corner, the old coal bin nobody cleaned out. Dark, quiet, close to the kitchen. Rodents love it.

Mice nest down there by the furnace and the water heater. Rats usually come up through a drain or squeeze in where the sill meets the stone. Either way, a lot of the calls we get start with something found in the basement.

Call and tell us what you've got down there. The tech checks the walls, drains and stored stuff, then gives you a plan and a price.

Rats by the drain, mice by the furnace

These are two different jobs. Mice got in through small gaps at the sill, around pipes or under a door. Trapping plus sealing those gaps fixes it, same as mouse control upstairs. Rats point to bigger openings or the sewer. Wet droppings near the floor drain, a missing drain cover, a gnawed hole at the base of the wall. That's rat work, a drain check and sometimes a plumber for the lateral.

Either way, the signs show up in the same places. Droppings along the walls and near the furnace. Chewed cardboard boxes and old clothes. Dirt pushed out of a gap in the wall. Scratching under the first floor at night. Grease marks along the top of the foundation.

The Pittsburgh potty, the floor drain and the stone walls

The tech walks the walls with a flashlight looking for droppings, rub marks and missing mortar. Then the drains, the toilet and any cleanouts. Then up at the sill and the joists where the house sits on the foundation. These are the spots that come up again and again:

• Floor drains with no cover, and the basement toilet
• Mortar gaps in rubble stone or block walls
• Sill plate gaps along the top of the foundation
• Old coal chutes and window wells
• Dirt crawl spaces under porches, kitchens and additions

The crawl space under the back kitchen

Lots of Pittsburgh houses have a kitchen or bath added on the back over a shallow crawl space. You see it all over Bloomfield's narrow lots. That seam between the addition and the original foundation was rarely tight, and mice follow the plumbing straight up into the kitchen. If you've got mice in the kitchen but nothing in the main basement, this is usually why.

If there's a dirt floor, the tech may bring up a vapor barrier and covering the vents with hardware cloth. Once the rodents are out, crawl space cleanup gets the old nesting out.

After high water

Homes near the creeks and rivers deal with something extra. In Millvale along Girty's Run, floods have soaked foundations and pushed rats out of creek banks and storm drains. Water loosens mortar and warps basement doors, and that opens new gaps. If your basement took on water, say so on the call. Once it dries out, it's worth having the foundation and sill resealed.

Between visits, help yourself out. Plastic bins with lids, not cardboard. Keep stuff off the floor and a foot off the walls so traps can go where rodents run. Fix the leaks you can, because damp basements draw rodents. Older stone basements, like a lot of them in Polish Hill, usually need more mortar than a poured wall.

Related: Rodent Proofing, Rat Control, Attic and Crawl Space Cleanup

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