Squirrel or Rat in the Loft? How Great Shelford Homeowners Can Tell the Difference

This is a diagnosis you can make from the garden, without going into the roof space at all, and it is one of the more reliable ones.

How a Squirrel Gets In

From outside, at roof level, and it needs a bridge to get there.

1. It reaches the roof — via an overhanging branch, a climbing plant, a trellis, a fence run meeting the building, a drainpipe, or an adjoining garage or shed roof.
2. It finds or makes an opening at the soffit, fascia, barge board, eaves, verge or under a lifted tile. Squirrels will gnaw an opening where one is not already available, and the damage is coarse and visible.
3. It goes straight into the roof space and stays there.

How a Rat Gets In

From ground level, into the building, and then upwards inside the structure.

1. It enters at low level — a pipe or cable entry, an air brick, a worn threshold, a gap into the cavity, or a drainage defect. BPCA put a rat's requirement at a gap of 15mm.
2. It climbs inside the structure — a wall cavity, a service riser, boxed pipework — all of which run vertically.
3. It emerges into the roof space at the wall head or where something passes through the ceiling.

What to Look At, From the Garden

• Trees. Anything overhanging or within a metre or so of the roof
• Climbing plants. Ivy in particular, which is both a ladder and cover once they are up
• Fences running to the building, giving a raised approach
• Drainpipes, especially older cast iron with brackets
• Adjoining structures: garage, shed, bin store, boundary wall
• Then the roofline itself, zoomed in, for coarse damage at a soffit, fascia or verge

And at Ground Level

• Pipe and cable entries, and the state of the filler around them
• Air brick covers, cracked or missing
• Door thresholds
• Gaps into the cavity at ground level
• Drainage covers, and whether they are intact
• Smearing at any low-level opening, which is a rat sign

The Proofing Follows From It

A squirrel means roofline work, at height, in metal — and frequently the cheapest and most effective single item is cutting back the branch or the ivy that gets them up there in the first place. A rat means ground-level proofing at pipe entries, air bricks and thresholds, and possibly a drainage question.

Both are priced by time rather than by room, because that is genuinely how the job works.