Rat Control in Uptown New Orleans, LA

Uptown is roof rat country. The stretch between St Charles and Magazine, and the streets running back toward Claiborne, combine two things a climbing rat wants most: mature live oak canopy touching the rooflines, and raised wood-frame houses with attics and open pier space underneath.

The oak canopy is the route in

The live oaks that make Uptown beautiful are also a rat highway. Limbs run out over roofs on almost every block, and a roof rat crosses from the canopy onto the ridge without ever touching the ground. Add the cable and power lines strung between poles, and the ivy and confederate jasmine that people let grow up the side of a house, and there are usually three or four ways onto any given roof.

From the roof it is a short trip in. Older Uptown houses have soffit and fascia joints that have moved with a century of heat and damp, gable vents with failed screens, and roof-to-wall junctions on rear additions where there is nearly always a gap.

Raised houses give you a second front

Most of the housing stock here sits on brick piers, so under the floor there is a dry, covered space the full footprint of the house. Norway rats take that space and then come up around plumbing penetrations, the tub trap and the kitchen sink cabinet. Lattice skirting does not stop them.

A lot of Uptown calls turn out to be both rats at once: roof rats in the attic and Norway rats underneath. That is why the inspection covers the roofline and the pier space before anything gets set.

Streets we work

Across Uptown and the Riverbend: the blocks off St Charles, Magazine and Freret, Broadmoor and Fontainebleau back toward Claiborne, the Irish Channel, and up through Carrollton toward Oak Street and the levee. Student rentals near Tulane and Loyola get their own pressure, because turnover and shared kitchens make a building easier to occupy.

Doubles, rentals and the shared-attic problem

A large share of Uptown housing is a double, and many doubles have a single continuous attic across both sides. That means a rat problem is rarely one household. One side seals and traps, the other does nothing, and the population simply shifts across the party wall and comes back.

It is worth raising with the other side of the house or with the owner before the work starts. Treating a shared attic as one space, once, is far cheaper and far more effective than each half paying for a partial job.

The same applies to student rentals near Tulane and Loyola, where a building may be empty over the summer and turn over every year. Problems get noticed late and reported later, so by the time anyone calls there is usually more in the attic than the tenant thinks.

What the work covers in Uptown

The service is the same wherever you are in the metro, and the emphasis shifts with the building. On a raised house it leans toward the pier space and the floor penetrations. On a slab house it leans toward the slab edge, the garage door and the roofline. Either way it starts with an inspection and ends with the building sealed.

• Rat Removal: Trapping and removal for an active rat problem, from the first inspection through the last check of the traps.
• Rat Prevention & Exclusion: Sealing the gaps rats use to get in, from the roofline down to the pier space, so the problem does not repeat.
• Infestation Treatment: A full plan for an established infestation: heavy trapping, sealing, sanitation and follow-up until the building is quiet.
• Roof Rat Control: The climbing rat that gets into New Orleans attics from tree limbs, palms and power lines. Handled from the roofline down.
• Rat Inspection: Finding the species, the entry points and the runways, so the work that follows is aimed at the right places.
• Rat Trapping: Traps placed where rats actually travel, then checked and reset on a schedule until the building goes quiet.

Get a rat problem in Uptown looked at

Call 504-395-3296 and describe what you are hearing and where you are hearing it. Overhead after dark points one way, under the floor points another, and that changes what gets inspected first. You get upfront pricing and no obligation before any work starts.