Squirrels in the Loft Space in Cambridge

Cambridge has a bit of everything overhead: older terraces with shared roof lines, college and student lets, and newer estates with boxed eaves and soffits. Grey squirrels can use all of them. What they do once inside is much the same whichever kind of roof they have found.

This post is about the loft itself: what is going on up there, what you can safely look at, and what has to be put right afterwards.

What a Squirrel Actually Does Up There

A loft gives a squirrel a dry, sheltered space close to food, with no predators. It treats it accordingly.

• It gnaws. Its teeth grow continuously, so it chews timber, pipe lagging, stored boxes and electrical cable. Stripped cable in a roof space is a fire risk, and it is the reason this is worth dealing with properly.
• It nests. Insulation gets pulled into a heap, tunnelled through or shredded, which leaves cold patches on the ceiling below.
• It stores food. Nuts and seeds end up tucked into corners, which is often where the rolling sound comes from.
• It widens the way in. A small gap at the eaves becomes a clean, chewed hole that lets rain and other animals in too.

What You Can Safely Check

You do not need to crawl across the joists to learn a great deal. From the hatch, with a torch, look for disturbed insulation, droppings, food scraps, and daylight showing at the edge of the roof. Outside, stand back from the house and look along the eaves for chewed timber, a displaced tile or a dark gap where a lower roof meets the wall.

Keep it to looking. Do not move nesting material, and do not block anything. If there are young in there, a sealed hole leaves an adult trying to get back in and young trapped inside, which is bad for everyone and worse for the roof.

Before assuming it is a squirrel

Night-time scratching points more to rodents; our post on rats in the loft deals with that. Soft fluttering at dusk may mean bats, and bats and their roosts are legally protected, so nothing should be blocked or disturbed until they are ruled out. An active wild bird's nest at the eaves is protected too.

Getting Them Out

Removal is by a trapping programme, not a single visit. Releasing a trapped grey squirrel is an offence, so anything caught is humanely dispatched, and we tell you that plainly before you book. How the programme is run, from siting the traps to checking them, is explained in our guide to squirrel trapping.

Our squirrel control service covers Cambridge and the surrounding towns. Squirrel trapping is £280 fixed cost, with no call-out fee and the price confirmed before anything is booked. The trapping cost guide explains why it is priced as a programme.

The noise stops when the squirrel goes. The problem stops when the roof is closed.

Putting the Loft Right Afterwards

Once the loft is confirmed clear, there is usually some tidying to do. It is worth doing properly rather than leaving the mess to settle.

Nesting material and droppings

Wear gloves and a dust mask, bag nesting material and droppings, and avoid sweeping dry debris into the air. Wash your hands afterwards. If you have a health condition that makes you worry about dust in the loft, speak to your GP or a pharmacist before tackling it yourself.

Insulation

Flattened or contaminated insulation does not do its job. Small patches can be lifted and replaced; a badly disturbed loft may be worth re-laying, which is a job for a builder or insulation installer.

Wiring, pipes and tanks

Have any chewed cable checked by an electrician, and look at pipe lagging and any cold water tank for damage. These are the repairs that matter most and the ones most easily forgotten once the noise has stopped.

Closing the Way In

The final step is proofing: closing every gap a squirrel could reuse with a material it cannot chew, and cutting back branches that give it a launch point. Our squirrel proofing guide goes through it in detail. Every treatment is guaranteed: if the problem comes back within 14 days of treatment, we return and re-treat free of charge.