Top 10 Ways To Stop Wildlife From Getting In Your Home

For as long as people have been living in houses, they’ve been looking for ways to stop wildlife from getting into them. It’s no easy task. Even new homes are highly susceptible to animal entries, and it doesn’t matter how durable the home is built.

Common Wildlife Intruders

Today most houses are intruded upon by common North American animals that are considered pests, like squirrels, raccoons, mice, rats, snakes and skunks.

Various birds species can get in your home if it’s not properly protected too. Essentially, they all make a big mess in your attic or walls, and can end up costing thousands of dollars in damages.

The reality is. as long as there are homes there will always be a need for wildlife removal and pest control companies. Before a wildlife problem occurs however, there are a number of ways you can stop them from getting in.

Tips To Stop Wildlife Entries

If wildlife are already in your home or attic, you have to call a professional wildlife removal company first to have it removed safely.

But if you don’t have an existing animal intrusion problem, follow these steps to avoid one:

• Reconstruct external areas of your home that facilitate easy wildlife entry like chimneys, air-vents, gable vents etc.
• Keep your yard free of garbage and debris that attract wildlife
• Have Ridge Guard installed along your ridge vent to hinder break-ins
• Have Drip Edge installed along your roof base-line, along your eavestroughs
• Place tiny-cut metal screens in your weeping brick holes (do not us SOS Brillo pads)
• Apply industrial-strength caulking to minor cracks and holes
• Repair the foundation of your home if there are any big holes present
• Apply a gutter guard product to your eavestroughs to hinder and prevent bird nests
• Use caulking to fill in small holes or corners that mice or bats can enter through
• Apply special coverings over your roof vents

Explanation of the Above Tips

Reconstruct external areas of your home

If you can easily get around your home from top to bottom, be on the lookout for areas of your home with noticeable sized holes. Holes the size of a baseball are big enough for full-grown squirrels and raccoons to get into your attic.

You need to inspect your chimney, your air vents, your gable vents, and any other area where you find an easy entry point for wildlife, and have those areas fixed to disable or hinder them from entering.

DID YOU KNOW? The cost of applying wildlife entry prevention to your home is much less than it is for removing wildlife and repairing the damage. We’ve seen claims for damages exceed the $10,000 mark many times, and we always strongly suggest to our readers to be preemptive, and hinder wildlife as much as possible before damage ensue. You can read our Wildlife Removal and Pest Control Process here.

If you cannot actually do the inspection and fixing yourself, you can easily call your local pest control company and they’ll be glad to do it for you.

Keep your yard free of garbage

The more rubbish and garbage there is in your yard, the more you’re going to attract wildlife to your property. Wildlife that are attracted by garbage tend to be squirrels, raccoons, mice and rats—all of which top the list of wildlife species that cause the most damage to a home.

The long standing advice for homeowners when it comes to their yards is to keep bins inside, and keep your lawn and garden clean. This way your home will be perceived by wildlife as less of a place to hang around to find food, and more of a place to just pass by.

Have Ridge Guard installed

Installing Ridge Guard along your ridge vent line cuts down raccoon, squirrel, mice and bat entries by up to at least 90%.

It can be said that a home with a protected ridge line is not going to experience any of the damage that home owners encounter with wild animals. It’s a tough product and its primary function is to keep wildlife out.

Have Drip Edge installed

Drip edge isn’t specifically manufactured for wildlife entry prevention but it’s the perfect application that once installed, makes it extremely difficult for wildlife to pry through.

It also adds a number of other protections along your roof-line like preventing weather damage and excess moisture from leaking into your home.

Many wildlife control companies will install drip edge for you, and can give you a stronger guarantee that wildlife will never enter your home through the area along your roof-line and eavestroughs.

Drip Edge is made with a very strong metal that virtually no form of wildlife can chew through.

Place tiny-cut metal screens in your weeping brick holes

Weeping brick on homes are those little openings you will find between some bricks. Their primarily function is to allow for the proper ventilation of the home, but they unfortunately also allow mice and snakes to get in too.

Resolving this issue is easy. Simply purchase a square foot of thin metal screening from Home Depot, cut out small square pieces, fold them slightly, and then gently jam them into the weeping openings you find.

Pest control companies usually take a few extra steps to ensure a home’s weeping brick are secured enough to keep wildlife out for at least 3 to 5 years, or longer.

Apply caulking to minor cracks and holes

Caulking won’t keep the larger forms of wildlife out of your home—animals like squirrels, raccoons—but it is a great prevention and exclusion product that will easily keep small animals like bats and mice from entering your home.

The main objective for using a caulking application is to hinder wildlife entries. It makes it quite difficult and next to impossible for them to enter. Failing to get pass caulking will coerce animals to go somewhere else to build a nest, especially if an opening isn’t readily available.

Repair the foundation of your home

If you live in a particularly older home, you may discover that its foundation is in need of repair, and that it may be facilitating the entrance of wildlife.

As time passes concrete can start to fail. It cracks more easily and becomes a bit weaker. If certain animals dig deep enough, they could exploit these weaknesses and use your foundation as an entry point to the rest of your home.

The animals that usually dig and find these weaknesses in a home’s foundation are mice, rats and snakes. If the holes are left too long and become big enough, it allows for larger animals such as skunks, raccoons and opossums to enter your home too.

There are various measures that can be taken to secure your home’s foundation. If foundation repair is a consideration of yours, it’s advised that you hire a wildlife removal company that provides this service because they’ll be applying the pest prevention measures and will be able to give you a guarantee from future entries.

Apply a gutter guard product to your eavestroughs

Applying a gutter guard product over your eavestroughs will substantially help reduce wildlife problems related primarily to birds. With years of neglect, birds can build large nests along your eavestroughs that will attract other pests, clog them up, and create a pretty ugly eye-sore.

Gutter guards are generally easy to install, and most of them come with simple instructions. If however, you are unable to install them yourself, a local handy-man or a professional wildlife removal company will happily install them for you.

Apply special coverings over your roof vents

Roof-vents are by far one of the most susceptible areas of intrusions by wildlife. Not only are they a main entry-source, they’re also a frequently damaged area of a home.

Typically only raccoons and squirrels are known to destroy roof vents and use them as entry points but once destroyed, they leave an entry point big enough to allow other forms of wildlife to get in. These can be animals like bats, birds and mice.

A destroyed roof vent will also leave your home open to weather and water damage too.

Roof vents can be covered by screening but the material used has to be strong enough to deter a raccoon or squirrel from physically removing it. It has to be strong enough to stop animals from chewing through it too.

If you apply this protective screening over your roof’s air vents, you’ll substantially reduce the risk of being broken into by a wild animal.

The Take Home

If you really are interested in reducing the risk of wildlife entries and you want to stop them from being able to enter your home, follow a few of the steps above.

Doing so will give you peace of mind but remember the only way to guarantee all aspects of wildlife prevention are in place, it’s advised to contact a local wildlife control company and have them give you some advice on home protection too!