How to Keep Mice out of the Garage

welcome back this is nick mcveigh with animal remover and today we're going to talk about how to keep mice out of your garage so why do mice go in garages well number one is that mice are looking for a perfect combination of temperature light space and humidity and garages often provide those parameters another thing to factor in is that people sometimes feed their pets in the garage they sometimes have bird seed in their garage so those are going to be food sources from ice and and thus are going to be attractive to mice so we're going to do a quick inspection of this garage to determine if we have activity uh or if we have any entry points and maybe some tips and tricks on what we can do to keep mice out the first thing that we're going to do when we inspect the garage is we're going to shut the garage door and we're going to take a look at the main weather seal that connects the garage door to the concrete and we want to very carefully look across and if you notice way down there on the end we have what looks to be like light coming through let's take a closer look we're now down here on the other end of the garage door and you can see that there's an opening and that opening is about 3 8 of an inch high which is just perfect for mice and snakes to be able to enter so why is that opening there well most likely this this is a pretty long garage door i think this is 16 or 20 feet long and weather stripping only comes in certain lengths so maybe they have a a 14 foot piece of weather stripping and they had to cut a two foot piece to make up the end there or maybe if it is a 20-footer maybe it's an 18-foot piece of weather stripping and so forth and so on so maybe this is where two pieces meet maybe they ran out of material who knows what happened there's a gap there so uh the way to to to stop that gap would be to uh replace the small piece on the end with one that is uh the correct size so that we can eliminate that gap let's take a look on the outside of the garage door and see if we have any entry points there okay now we're on the outside of the garage door and what we're looking for against the door and it doesn't look bad there are some small gaps at the bottom here's something i noticed is that there are some buckets of bird seed in the garage now this homeowner seems to be relatively clean with their bird seed there's not much if any spilled on the ground which is good and it looks like they've got a nice heavy metal container that mice can't chew through anytime you store pet food or bird seed in the garage you want to make sure it's sealed in metal containers if possible plastic containers if that's all you have but make sure they're as heavy duty as possible here we are looking under some of the shelves in the garage and you can see that this it's been a while since this garage has been cleaned or swept out that could be an issue because if areas go unattended and there's not much activity in those areas mice could definitely use those areas for our bridge some cobwebs now i'm not seeing any mouse droppings which is a good sign now we're in a small bathroom that is connected to the garage and we're doing a little bit of an inspection in here it doesn't look like there's any mouse droppings in here either looks good here we are uh under a sink in the garage and uh we're looking for any leaks or anything like that it all seems to be pretty dry which is a good thing because that could provide a source of water for the mice thing that i noticed in this garage is that there is a dryer vent that comes through the wall through the garage and then goes into the house we're definitely going to want to check that dryer vent on the outside but another thing that we're going to look for is we're going to look and there's also a water heater there behind the water heater to see if we see any mouse droppings or any evidence of mice and that all looks good as well this is a freezer and it is definitely a lot cleaner under this freezer than it was on the other side of the garage probably because this is maybe removed recently don't see any evidence of mice under this freezer okay we're on the outside of the garage now that dryer vent that i was talking about you can see that that dryer vent is sealed very nicely and this is an older style heartland dryer vent i don't think that they manufacture these anymore but they are sufficient for keeping mice out because the way the dryer vents is it has a little cup inside of that helmet and that cup lifts when the dryer is on and blows the lint out of the bottom and the air out of the bottom and then what's off it falls down back into place it's an old heartland dryer vent it could definitely use an upgrade but it's not a need it's definitely not something that needs to be replaced right away it's sufficient for keeping mice out so in conclusion this garage looks pretty good we do have a couple of places where mice can get in uh they can get in through the sides of the garage door at the bottom where the exterior weather stripping meets the garage door and then they can also get in uh where i showed you that gap where we have some light coming through so those need to be addressed we will address the sides of the garage door here shortly the other thing i want to note is that the the the garage could use a good cleaning uh oftentimes of the mouse issue cleaning is 90 of the problem if you clean you can usually eliminate 90 of a mouse issue and as long as you keep up on it rodents often follow urine scent trails uh and that can often lead to other rodents and attract other animals that eat rodents as well um the other thing is is that the bird feed in this garage is being stored in a metal container which is great so i'll talk to the homeowner and i'll give them some recommendations as far as what they can do on their end for some integrated pest management of keeping this garage just a little bit cleaner at the bottom of the garage door right there is one of the most common places that mice enter the reason for that is because the vinyl weather stripping of the garage door meets the garage and oftentimes it's not long enough to meet the concrete sometimes when it is long enough to meet the concrete you might end up chewing it out anyways and then creating a little gap and going inside here how it doesn't seal to the door of the garage perfectly but then also you can see my finger it's a perfect way for you so one of the things that we're going to do today is install an excluder garage door weather stripping kit to prevent that okay here's a view from the inside of the garage and you can see step number one i've already completed that's to open the garage step two is we want to ensure the weatherstrip surface is clean dry and free of any debris or dirt now the kit that we're going to use is called the excluder professional grade garage door weatherstrip shields this comes with two shields and it's an adhesive metal-backed barrier that prevents rodents from chewing through but what it also does is it can also seal off that small gap at the bottom so i'm going to open the kit and in the kit the first thing you'll see that we have is an alcohol cleansing wipe so that's the first thing that i'm going to do so i'm going to open up this wipe easiest way to see how much you need to clean is to hold your kit right near your seal make sure you've got a nice clean surface give that alcohol just a second to evaporate next thing i'm going to pull out of the kit is the actual strip itself now you'll see this strip has this blue backing if you get your fingernail right under there you want to be careful not to touch the glue on the back of the strip next thing you want to do i like to go in it go at it from the side and stick my strip in the corner and then fold my strip so that i get a nice tight fit now you can see there's a little bit of light coming in there at the bottom that's about as tight as i'm going to get it because the floor is unlevel in that area i'm going to push on my strip and that's it let's take a look from the outside and you can see a little bit of that shiny metal barrier sticking out from the bottom of course you can paint that if you'd like to be discreet as possible but other than that that's finished let's go ahead and do the other side okay here we are on the other side you can see that gap is slightly bigger so again i'm going to take my same alcohol prep pad i'll hold my strip up next to it to see how much i actually need to clean and i'm going to clean that really good so we get a good seal again i'm going to take take the blue backing tape off of my excluder garage door seal again remember the key is to to kind of stick it in that corner you can see i've put it in that little gap there and then i'm just going to kind of fold it and we'll take a look from the outside you can see a little bit of that metal colored strip sticking through there again you can paint that other than that that is complete and now that strip is a little bit more mouse resistant than it was before thanks for joining me today and have an awesome day

Channel: Animal Remover

Views: 228

Rating: 3.6666667 out of 5

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Id: 3GgPaOTpCCo

Length: 12min 2sec (722 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 30 2020