Baiting alone does not end a rodent problem
You can kill every rat on a property and have new ones a fortnight later if the way in is still open. Rodents travel from neighbouring plots, construction sites, drainage and rubbish areas, and a property with accessible entry points simply keeps receiving them. Ongoing baiting on an unproofed building is a permanent cost with no finish line.
So the work is two halves. We reduce the population with trapping and tamper-proof bait boxes, and we seal what lets them in: gaps around service penetrations, damaged drain covers, door sweeps that no longer meet the floor, roof and ventilation gaps.
Warehouses and food premises
Industrial and food storage properties are a specific problem because loading bays stay open, food is present, and neighbouring plots are often vacant. Here the answer is a maintained perimeter of monitored bait stations plus a proofing programme, documented visit by visit — because for these premises the record is as important as the result. Every visit produces a dated report naming what was found, what was done and where, and that is what an inspector asks to see.
Safety around children and pets
Bait boxes are lockable and tamper-proof, placed where a child or pet cannot reach them. In family homes we will often recommend trapping instead, and we will explain the trade-off rather than just choosing for you.
Dead rodent removal
If there is a smell and nothing visible, something has usually died inside a wall cavity, ceiling void or duct. We locate and remove it. Left alone it becomes a fly and beetle infestation within about a week, which is a second problem on top of the first.
Rat or mouse: not the same job
The first thing a technician settles is which animal you have, because almost every decision after that changes. Three are common here.
Brown rat — large, heavy-bodied, blunt-nosed, with a tail shorter than its body. It lives at ground level and below: burrows along boundary walls and in irrigated planting, drainage, manholes, bin stores. It needs to drink daily, which is why leaks and irrigation matter. It is cautious about anything new in its environment, so a bait box dropped in front of it may be ignored for days — the technician places and then leaves it, rather than moving things around and resetting that suspicion. Droppings are large, 15 to 20mm, and capsule-shaped with blunt ends.
Roof rat — slimmer, pointed nose, big ears, and a tail longer than its body. This is the climber, and in the UAE it is the one in villa compounds: up palm trees, along cables and pipework, into roof voids and false ceilings. If something is running overhead at night, this is almost always what it is. Droppings are smaller than the brown rat’s and pointed at both ends.
House mouse — small, with droppings 3 to 6mm, like dark grains of rice, and a lot of them. Mice behave in the opposite way to rats: they are curious rather than suspicious, they nibble at many points instead of feeding at one, and they get most of their water from food, so a dry building gives you no protection. That changes the method — many small bait and trap points spread through the area rather than a few large ones on a run.
The gap sizes are worth committing to memory, because they drive the whole proofing job. A mouse gets through about 6mm — the width of a pencil. A young rat manages roughly 20mm. And both will gnaw a gap that is nearly big enough until it is big enough, which is why “there is only a small hole” is not reassuring.
The signs, and what they tell us
- Droppings. The most useful evidence on the property, because size tells us the species and distribution tells us where they are living rather than where they are travelling.
- Gnaw marks. Fresh damage is pale and sharp-edged; old damage is darkened and smooth. That difference is how we know whether a problem is active or historic.
- Smears and runways. Rats follow the same routes and leave a greasy dark line along skirting, pipework and the base of walls. Those lines are where traps and boxes go — not where it is convenient to put them.
- Noise overhead at night. Scratching or scurrying in a false ceiling or roof void, usually shortly after dark. Roof rats.
- Burrows. Holes 50 to 80mm across at the base of a boundary wall, under decking, or in soft irrigated soil, often with a smooth worn entrance.
- Nesting material. Shredded cardboard, insulation, cloth or palm fibre gathered in a store room, behind a water heater or in a ceiling void.
- Damaged packaging. Gnawed corners on dry goods, spilled grain or pet food, and small holes in bags stacked on a pallet.
- Chewed cables. Treat this one urgently. Rodents gnaw cable insulation, and it is a genuine fire risk as well as the reason air-conditioning and lighting circuits fail for no apparent reason.
- A pet fixed on one spot. A dog or cat staring at the base of a kitchen unit or a wall is worth taking seriously.
Where they get in
Rodents rarely come through a door. On almost every property we survey, the way in is one of these, and most of them are things nobody looks at.
- Gaps around air-conditioning pipework, refrigerant lines and electrical conduit where they pass through an external wall — the single most common entry point in UAE villas.
- Damaged, cracked or missing drain and manhole covers, and unsealed inspection chambers.
- Door sweeps that no longer meet the floor: a gap you can see daylight through is an open door. Garage and store room doors are the usual culprits.
- Roof-to-wall junctions, soffit gaps and unsealed parapet penetrations.
- Ventilation grilles, extract outlets and weep holes without mesh behind them.
- Palm fronds, tree branches and cable runs touching the roof or a first-floor window — a bridge straight past everything at ground level.
- Gaps behind kitchen plinths and under built-in units, which connect to the wall cavity more often than people expect.
- Loading bay doors and shutter tracks on commercial units, and shared service risers in apartment buildings.
Proofing has to be done with the right materials. Expanding foam on its own is not proofing — rats chew through it in a night. Gaps get steel wool or mesh packed in and then mortared or sealed over, and that is the part cheap jobs leave out.
What the inspection covers
The inspection is free, and on a rodent job it is most of the value, because the survey is what makes the treatment finite rather than a subscription.
- The outside first. A full walk of the perimeter looking for burrows, runs, smears and droppings, plus the boundary line, the bin area, drainage, manholes and any neighbouring plot or construction site pushing pressure at you.
- Species and scale. Droppings and gnaw marks are mapped, not just noted, so we can say whether this is one animal that came in through a specific hole or an established population with a nest on site.
- Roof and voids. Roof void, false ceilings and service ducts, which is where roof rat activity is confirmed or ruled out.
- What is feeding them. Open bins, pet or bird food, fallen dates and fruit, stored dry goods, a leaking tap or irrigation line.
- A written proofing schedule. Every entry point found, in priority order, with what it needs — so you can see what is being sealed and what it costs, rather than being told “we’ll seal the gaps”.
- The bait and trap plan. Placed on the runs identified in the survey, in lockable tamper-proof boxes or as trapping where children, pets or wildlife make bait the wrong choice.
Keeping them out afterwards
- Bins closed and off the ground, and no bags left out overnight. In a villa compound this one change often ends the problem on its own.
- Trim palm fronds and branches back at least a metre from the roof and from upper windows, and clear fallen dates and fruit.
- Fix leaking taps, irrigation lines and air-conditioning condensate. Brown rats need water every day and will not settle where there is none.
- Stop storing pallets, timber, cardboard or sacks against an external wall, and keep dry goods off the floor and in sealed containers rather than original bags.
- Fit and maintain door sweeps, and mesh every vent and weep hole.
- Keep drain and manhole covers intact — replace a cracked one rather than weighting it down.
- Feed pets indoors, or clear the bowl after twenty minutes. A bowl of dry food left out overnight is a bait station working against you.
- Re-check the proofing after any building, landscaping or air-conditioning work. New penetrations get made and not sealed all the time.
Warehouses, food premises and any site next to an open plot or a construction site need this maintained rather than done once, with a report per visit — that is the annual contract, and commercial pest control covers how it is documented for inspections. For villas the same pressure comes from the garden, the boundary wall and the bin store: see residential pest control. Rodent work starts at AED 300 because most of the visit is proofing rather than baiting; the pricing page sets out what moves that figure. If you are not certain what you are dealing with, the pest library has the droppings and damage side by side.