On 14 Sep 2003 21:14:14 GMT, (Huge) wrote:

I have the materials to do this, but never bothered. Nothing has
entered the duct after 2 years.

Related, but not directly.....

Our house is now about 8 years old. Last winter (about January time)
we had a couple of really cold nights. Wife and daughter heard
scurrying sounds above their bedrooms. We'd never had this before.

Got local pest control in, they confirmed that one rat had made its
way into the roof space, and then departed. Apparently just looking
around. Believed to have climbed up the inside of the drainpipe to
reach the loft. Confirmed when pest control lifted the access panel in
the back garden - chewed snail shell which is the way a rat gets to
the contents of the shell (they go in the side door to get the squidgy
contents, not the front door).

Anyway, moral of this story is that just because you haven't had
problems yet doesn't mean that you might not have in the future. It
took nearly 8 years before we got a rat problem (one rat, visited on
two nights). And that seems to have come about because our local
Tescos (about half a mile down the road) were having some significant
building work done, and that had disturbed the rat population who were
looking for new food sources.

I'd recommend putting that grill on even if you haven't seen a problem
yet. If ratty does get inside your house he's going to make a bee line
for any food supplies (kitchen obviously), and the first you might
know about it is rat droppings. Ratty might set up a nest in an
inaccessible place and it could be very costly to eradicate. Applying
that grill would be an insignificant cost.

PoP