What Kind of Damage Can Rodents Cause?

While rodents are small, unassuming, and seem like a small annoyance, they can cause thousands of dollars in damage. 

And the more they multiply inside your home, the more difficult they are to remove without professional help. Being both sneaky and resilient, they’ll stop at nothing to build their nests and take your resources.

So, what is the specific damage that rodents cause?

Electrical Wiring Damage

Rodent teeth never stop growing, so they never stop gnawing. And, they don’t care if they have to use electrical wiring. In fact, it’s the perfect hardness to wear down their teeth.

With exposed copper inside a wall cavity, the risks for a fire increase. The damage sits hidden inside your walls, until you realize something needs fixed. Next thing you know, you’re paying an electrician to open up your walls and find the problem (which is a lot more expensive than any rodent control services).

Shredded Insulation

Insulation makes perfect nesting material, and rodents savor every piece. They shred it, compress it, and tunnel through it. All of this makes it less effective for insulating your home. Which means your heating bill will be the only thing taking the heat throughout that cold New Rochelle winter.

Then, nesting produces contamination. Your insulation could accumulate droppings and urine, which means the insulation needs to be replaced (more money down the drain).

Structural Damage

Rodents also like to chew wood framing, trim, baseboard, and door casing like it’s a sport. They widen existing gaps and create new pathways for them to enter your home. And soon, they can work their way into your subfloor and joists (especially in crawl spaces and basements with low traffic).

Older homes in New Rochelle can be especially vulnerable. After decades of settling, there can be plenty of open gaps for rodents to use.

Personal Belongings Ruined

Anything soft, paper-based, or stored in cardboard is nesting material:

• Boxed photos, documents, and books
• Stored clothing, linens, and holiday decorations
• Furniture upholstery and mattresses in storage
• Cardboard boxes of anything

And unfortunately, because rodents work in quiet, undisturbed places, the loss usually isn't discovered until you go looking for something. And by then it's shredded, stained, and unsalvageable.

Food Contamination

Rodents contaminate far more food than they eat.

They travel across counters, cutting boards, and prep surfaces, leaving droppings and urine as they go. They chew into pantry packaging, which means boxed and bagged goods are open to contamination whether or not anything is visibly missing.

The CDC states that rodents can spread disease to people directly through contact with droppings, urine, and saliva, and indirectly through fleas, ticks, and mites that have fed on an infected rodent. So, anything in contact with droppings gets thrown out (along with more of your grocery budget).

Odor and Air Quality

You might smell the problem before you see it.

Nesting material and accumulated waste in an enclosed space produce a persistent musky odor that pushes through walls and vents. The odor of rodents dying in the walls might also push through the ductwork.

Because of this, air quality suffers too. Rodent dander is a known allergy and asthma trigger, and when nesting sits in or near ductwork, your HVAC system distributes it through the house.

The CDC advises against sweeping or vacuuming droppings and nesting material, because that action puts particles into the air. Their guidance is to wet the area with a disinfectant or bleach solution first, let it soak, then wipe it up.

Use Professional Rodent Control to Finally Kick Them Out

Rodent damage compounds silently. 

They reproduce quickly and contaminate your living space even faster. And because most of it happens inside walls, attics, and crawl spaces, you might see the signs after it’s too late for DIY rodent control to work.

And that’s why Mosquito Squad Plus of Southern Westchester Rockland County serves New Rochelle and surrounding communities with effective rodent control. Our trained technicians walk your property to identify activity and locate rodent entry points. Your treatment plan is always built around your property, not your neighbors. Then, we use EPA-registered products applied according to label guidelines.

No treatment clears a property permanently, but we get pretty close. Our Multi-Pest 365 Plus rodents package keeps your rodent control (along with other pests) consistent and always on tap. This way, rodents never have the opportunity to drain your wallet.

Suspect rodent activity in your New Rochelle home? Call Mosquito Squad Plus of Southern Westchester Rockland County at (914) 533-1159 or contact us online for a free quote.