Rodent Exclusion Services

Rodent exclusion in San Jose, Oakland, or Mill Valley is not the same as rodent exclusion in Phoenix or Dallas. Three factors make the Bay Area its own problem:

Roof rats dominate suburban neighborhoods, not Norway rats. Roof rats prefer high entry points — attic vents, eave gaps, and power-line access. In most Bay Area suburban neighborhoods, the majority of exclusion work happens 8 feet off the ground or higher, which is why generic exclusion checklists miss the actual entry points.

Norway rats are more common in dense urban areas like downtown San Francisco and Oakland’s inner city, where they enter at ground level through sewers, foundation gaps, and basement openings.

Bay Area housing stock has unique vulnerabilities:

• Eichlers (Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, San Jose, and parts of Marin): slab foundation, no attic, low-pitch flat roof. Rodents enter through roof-edge transitions and the post-and-beam exterior, not under the house.
• Craftsman bungalows (Berkeley, Oakland, Alameda, Willow Glen): raised foundation with vented crawl space, original plastic foundation louvers, basement and cellar accesses. Rodents enter under the house and migrate up through wall voids.
• Victorians (San Francisco, parts of Oakland): balloon framing means a hole at the foundation creates a vertical highway to the attic. Multiple wall voids, old chimneys, and exposed gas-pipe penetrations.
• Hillside homes (Oakland Hills, Berkeley Hills, Marin, Saratoga, Los Gatos): daylight basements, deck supports, and retaining walls each create entry points that a flat-lot inspection misses.

California drought drives rodents from open lots, hillsides, and greenbelt areas into irrigated residential yards. Properties bordering open space, like Tilden Park in Berkeley, Joaquin Miller Park in Oakland, Mount Madonna near Gilroy, and Henry Cowell near Santa Cruz, see new rat infestations every summer.

We have spent over 15 years working in every one of these housing types, in every one of these microclimates. Our inspection approach changes for each one.

Extermination removes the rodents currently inside your home using traps or bait. Exclusion seals the entry points they used to get in, so new rodents cannot follow. Most rodent problems need both: you remove the active population and seal the home so the problem does not come back. Exclusion alone, without first removing active rodents, risks trapping animals inside your walls.

We remove the active population first, then seal entry points once we confirm no rodents remain inside.

Most residential exclusion jobs take two to four hours, depending on the size of the property and how many entry points we find. Larger properties or those with extensive roofline damage may take longer. We give you a clear timeline estimate after the inspection.

Pricing depends on the size of the structure, the number of entry points, and whether contaminated insulation needs replacement. Bay Area benchmarks:

Every job starts with a free inspection. We give you a fixed written quote before any work begins — no surprise charges, no hourly add-ons, no upsells in the middle of the job.
Get your free inspection: (408) 871-6988

Our exclusion work comes with a one-year warranty on every area we repaired and sealed. If rodents get back through any area we sealed (from weather exposure, rodent gnawing, or normal wear), we come back and fix it at no charge.

Exclusion works best when you reduce the conditions around your home that attract rodents. Move compost bins and wood piles away from the house, trim branches and ivy back from the roofline, and store garbage in sealed containers. We walk you through everything specific to your property at the end of every visit.

Most standard homeowners’ insurance policies do not cover rodent exclusion, since insurers classify it as a maintenance issue rather than sudden damage. Some policies cover specific damage from rodents, such as chewed wiring that causes an electrical fire, but not the exclusion work itself. We can provide a detailed scope of work and materials list that you can submit to your insurer if needed.

Most customers we visit have already tried sealing a few obvious holes – expanding foam around a pipe, steel wool stuffed in a gap, a hardware-store door sweep. The rats come back within weeks. Here’s why:

• Expanding foam alone fails. Rats chew through standard expanding foam in a single night. Foam works only as a backing material behind metal mesh or cement — never as a primary seal.
• Steel wool compresses and rusts. It’s fine as a short-term plug, but after a few months of moisture, it falls out of the gap. We use galvanized hardware cloth or knitted copper mesh, which doesn’t compress and doesn’t degrade.
• Hardware-store door sweeps fail within a year. Standard rubber sweeps don’t reach the floor evenly, and rats chew through them. Garage doors need full-perimeter threshold seal kits with brush sweeps and a rigid bottom rail.
• DIY misses the high entry points. Bay Area homes are dominated by roof rats, which means most entry points are 8 feet off the ground or higher — gable vents, eave gaps, dryer-vent louvers, satellite-cable penetrations, chimney chases. If you only seal what you can see from the ground, you are missing the entry points rats are actually using.
• DIY doesn’t address the source moisture. Rats need water more than food. A slow attic leak, a leaky crawl-space pipe, or a yard sprinkler running at night will keep drawing new rats, no matter how many holes you seal.

A mouse can fit through a gap the size of a dime (¼ inch). A rat can fit through a gap the size of a quarter (½ inch). Anywhere a pencil can fit, a young rodent can fit. This is why exclusion requires inspecting and sealing every penetration, no matter how small.

Almost never. Rodenticide bait creates a serious secondary-poisoning risk for Bay Area wildlife — hawks, owls, foxes, and family pets that eat poisoned rodents. We use snap traps and live traps for indoor populations, and exclusion to prevent re-entry. Bait stations are used only on commercial properties where the building owner has specifically requested them and wildlife exposure is low.

The sealing materials we use — galvanized hardware cloth, copper mesh, sheet metal — don’t degrade and carry a lifetime materials warranty. The labor itself carries a one-year service warranty: if rodents find a new way in within 12 months, we come back at no charge to seal it.

For standard sealing work, no. For visible exterior changes — vent screens, chimney caps, painted sheet metal — some HOAs require notification. We’ll flag anything HOA-relevant during the inspection and can coordinate with your board directly if needed.