How to Get Rid of Rats in a Greenwich Property

The Sequence That Works

Every effective rat job runs in the same order, and the order matters more than the products.

1. Establish what is actually happening. Which areas carry the activity, how long it has been going on, whether it is confined to one part of the building, and what non-target animals and people are around.
2. Find the route. Not just where the droppings are - where the animals are coming from and how they are getting in.
3. Remove the population. Control placed in the runs actually being used, in secured points.
4. Check and return. What has been taken and where tells you whether the whole population has been reached.
5. Close the way in. Last, after activity has stopped - never first.
6. Remove what is keeping them there. Food sources, harbourage, and anything structural that keeps the property attractive.

Skip step two and you have a treatment. Do step five before step four and you have rodents sealed inside a wall. Skip step six and you are back next year.

What Works and What Does Not

Things that genuinely help

• Removing the food source. Spilled seed under a bird feeder, an open or damaged compost bin, pet food left out, bin bags stored on the ground rather than in a bin. This does not clear a population on its own, but it stops the property being worth staying in.
• Clearing harbourage. Piled timber, an unused shed base, dense growth along a boundary, a decked area with an open edge.
• Closing the route. The single most valuable thing, once the animals are out.
• Telling us what you have already tried. It changes where we look and what the population will have learned to avoid.

Things that mostly do not

• A single trip to a hardware shop. Rats are neophobic - they treat anything new in a familiar route with suspicion. One bait point put somewhere reachable very often produces nothing at all, which is not the same as there being no rats.
• Ultrasonic plug-in devices. There is no good evidence they clear an established rodent population.
• Blocking the hole first. This traps animals inside the building. It is the most common and most expensive DIY mistake, because the consequence is usually opening up plasterwork later.
• Treating only where the droppings are. The droppings are where they travel. The problem is where they live and where they get in.

How Long It Takes

It would be easy to put a number here and it would not be honest. What determines the timescale is how established the population is, whether the food source is still available, and whether the route is inside your control or somebody else's.

What we can say about the shape of it: rat work is a programme rather than a single call, because neophobia means the first placement is often ignored for a period. Progress is measured by what has been taken and by whether fresh signs are still appearing, not by whether the noise stopped on the first night. A quiet fortnight followed by a return is the classic pattern of a population that was reduced rather than cleared.

Safety Around Pets, Children and Wildlife

Tell us at the survey what animals are in the property and what wildlife uses the garden. It changes what is used and where it goes.

Control is placed in secured points and in locations not accessible to children or pets. Where there are non-target animals - a cat that hunts, a dog that gets into everything, foxes or birds in the garden - that is a factor in the method, and it is much better raised at the start than discovered halfway through.

Three Situations Where We Will Tell You We Cannot Fix It Alone

• The route is a defective drain. Common in the older housing across Greenwich, Woolwich and Plumstead. That is a drainage repair and a drainage contractor will quote it. Treatment around an open drain connection is a holding operation.
• The activity is coming from a neighbouring property or a shared void. Treating your side alone is half the job, and you should know that before you book rather than after.
• The entry point is a building defect. A rotten soffit, a failed verge, a hole in render. We will describe it clearly enough for a builder or roofer to quote it.

After the Treatment

Two things decide whether you see us again. The first is proofing - £180, up to 1 hour, quoted separately, done once the loft or the subfloor is confirmed clear. The second is the food source, which costs nothing and is entirely in your hands.

A property with the route closed and nothing worth eating in the garden is a property rats pass through rather than move into. That is the actual goal, and it is more achievable than "never seeing a rat again", which nobody can promise you in a city.

What It Costs, and What Sits Outside the Price

For completeness, since this guide is about the whole process rather than the treatment alone.

We separate these deliberately rather than rolling them into one number. A single figure that quietly includes work we cannot actually do is how a customer ends up paying for a repair that never happened.