Rat Infested Mechanical Room

Alan (California Radiant) Forbes

We've all seen this. Older, retired couple with the husband in a board and care facility. He was handy enough that he did some the modifications and repairs, but most of the time, he never got around to it. Now that he is out of the house, his wife is getting things done.

Only a few of the zones work from either the broken zone valves or thermostats. Pressure is zero; not even the bypass will let water through. Because there's no water pressure, the pump is frozen.

Rat feces and smell rampant and cardboard boxes stored too close to the boiler.

PC7060

wow

SlamDunk

Rats! I hate rats. They are master tunnelers and incredibaly smart. She needs pest control and clean up.

Jamie Hall

That sort of thing is so sad. Yes, the lady needs pest control and cleanup. I'd give odds, though, that with her husband in a care home she also needs enough money to get a decent meal.

There often is some community organisation — sometimes in small towns even the Town (not in a city, though) or maybe a church which can help?

hot_rod

you see the good, bad and ugly out there! I suppose that is the case most everywhere.

I've been in some nasty restaurant crawlspaces. When there is food in the mix the rats swarm to the scene👀

EBEBRATT-Ed

If pest control and exterminators do their job, they put themselves out of business.

Replaced a boiler in a bank (really old building) about 10 years ago. The place had cockroaches really bad. The boiler room was full of all kinds of junk that shouldn't have been there. Old wood, left over tile, broken furniture you get the picture. We needed some room because the old boiler was going to be abandoned in place and the new one placed beside it. Due to the delay in getting the new boiler and a few other things the job was dragged out over 6 weeks or so. It was summer and they didn't need the boiler to run so while waiting for the new boiler we only worked their sporadically. First thing my helper and I did was clean out all the junk and lug it outside and put it in the bank's dumpster. Just did it never asked for permission. They had an exterminator show up every few weeks and spray stuff around. Didn't do anything.

My ex-mother-in-law was a saint (unlike her daughter) and used to go to Florida in the winter where she had a trailer. Of course, FLA has bugs and she hated them. She told me "Borax Ed that keeps the roaches away"

So, after the boiler room was clean, I stopped at HD and bought some cockroach killer that had borax in it.

Sprinkled it around the boiler room where the walls meet the floor.

The next day we came in and found 1 dead cockroach and that was the last one we ever saw.

Came back weeks later with the new boiler and started working. The building and the wiring were old, so we tripped a breaker with our pipe machine. Only one outlet in the cellar and few lights. Took some panel covers off and couldn't find the dead circuit.

I asked my helper to go up and ask the tellers if there was a panel upstairs. He found the tripped breaker, so all was well.

While he was up there the tellers asked him" did you guys do something about the cockroaches? We haven't seen any since you started this job"

We also had a visit from the exterminator. I told him what we did and he asked what we used

He said" that stuff don't do any good the cockroaches will just go somewhere else".

I said "isn't that the point"

Mad Dog_2

2 or 3 Feral Cats....leave them bowls of water....rats will be eRATicated quickly. Mad Dog

SlamDunk

I worked in lower manhattan at night, cleaning during high school summers. While On a break, in the basement, I heard this horrible cat yowl. We had a basement cat and a rat just bit off its tail. That cat was never the same. She lived to be 18 years old but one day she fell in to a barrel of number six oil. My father tried to clean her, took her to a vet but she couldnt be saved. Poor ol' Shady.

For giant wood roaches, water bugs, cockroaches, palmetto bugs, whatever you call them, " Cy-kik" or "Cysmic CS". Both Kills everything that crawls. Safe to use in restaurants and safe indoors. Lasts 90 days indoors.

Alan (California Radiant) Forbes

That red tank on the wall is the indirect - probably 10 or 15 gallons. The aquastat is set at 160° with a tempering valve. I'm sure DHW is limited, but it's an example of what you can do with elevated water temperatures.

The boiler is way oversized; 210,000 BTU for a 2,000 square foot house.

MatthewPK

Is this a detached home?

Whenever people have infestations of nearly any kind I tend to recommend tent fumigation. It might be heavy handed but it's unambiguous.

First you fix all external seals. Get exclusion correct. Any pest control can do this. Ground-level perimeter things are most important. Then the tent fumigation should kill practically everything in the house, insects and rats alike.

After that it's a clean up effort and a few odd odors of rodents died in the walls but you can begin remediation with good confidence that rodents are dead.

mattmia2

~170,000 btu/hr will make a lot of hot water in CA.

What's with the paper plates?

Alan (California Radiant) Forbes

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1802689#Comment_1802689

The owner used them as labels. "DHW SUPPLY", etc.

JakeCK

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1802509#Comment_1802509

Depends on how big the rats are. I've seen some rats bigger than my 4 month old lab mix, and twice the size of my obese 16lb cat.

pedmec

@Alan (California Radiant) Forbes Thats not an indirect. That's an instantaneous hot water heater made by TFI/everhot. You need a bigger boiler to make sure you always have hot boiler water in the tank. There is very little boiler water in the tank. if the boiler can't maintain a high boiler temperature you are going to lose your domestic hot water. I used to put these things in everywhere but for some reason they fell out of favor. they take such a small foot print too. Price wise they were competitive before copper got so expensive. the whole tank is mostly copper coil. I used to supply multiple 64 unit buildings, 44 unit buildings, etc everywhere with the size of a 40 gallon water heater.