Where Are Squirrels Getting Into the Roof of My Saint Ives Home?

People go up ladders to look at roofs and it is not worth it. Everything you actually need is visible from ground level if you go about it properly.

What You Need

• A phone with a decent camera, or binoculars
• Forty minutes, ideally on a bright day with the sun behind you
• Access to the whole perimeter, including the sides you never walk along
• An upstairs window or two, for the angles the garden does not give
• A notebook, or the phone

The Method

1. Walk right round the building once, without stopping, to see the shape of the roof and where you can stand.
2. Then go round again in sections, photographing each stretch of roofline zoomed in. Overlap the sections so nothing falls between two photographs.
3. Photograph each gable end separately, top to bottom, including the verge and the apex.
4. Photograph every junction — where a lower roof meets a wall, around dormers, valleys, rooflights, pipes and flues.
5. Photograph from upstairs windows, including looking along the gutter line and down onto lower roofs.
6. Look at the ground below the roofline for debris — gnawed fragments, insulation, shells.
7. Then sit down and look at the photographs properly, on the largest screen you have. This is the part that finds things, not the walking round.

And the Half-Hour That Beats All of It

Sit somewhere with a view of the roof, shortly after first light or in the couple of hours before dusk, and watch. Squirrels are active in daylight and use the same route repeatedly. Half an hour at the right time very often produces the animal going in or out, which identifies both the species and the exact opening in one go.

It costs nothing, it requires no equipment, and it is more reliable than any amount of photography.

What You Are Looking For

• A gnawed opening with pale exposed timber or rough chewed plastic
• A gap at a soffit or fascia joint, particularly at a corner
• A missing or lifted dry verge unit, or failed verge mortar
• A displaced ridge tile or a lifted, slipped or broken tile
• Staining or rub marks at an opening
• Insulation showing at a gap, or on the ground below
• Anything reaching the roof: branches, ivy, fences, drainpipes, adjoining structures

What Not to Do

• Do not go up a ladder. Not to look, not to photograph, not to check. Falls from ladders are common and roof inspection is not worth one
• Do not go onto a roof, ever, without proper access equipment and training
• Do not poke anything into an opening you have found
• Do not seal anything until the roof space is confirmed clear

Send us the photographs. Most roofline questions can be answered from them, and where they cannot, a pest inspection and survey is a fixed cost and covers the roofline properly.