How best to block a hole!

[Ret.]

Recently had a field-mouse in the kitchen. Didn't take long to catch it - but I was initially puzzled as to how it had got into the house. We have UPVC doors front and back, and all the airbricks around the house are intact.

Eventually I found what I am sure is the access point. My CH boiler (and gas meter) is located in the attached garage. The flow and return pipes from the boiler, and also the gas pipe, enter the house from the garage via a hole in the garage/house wall 3" above floor level. This brings the pipes into the house beneath the suspended floor in the hall. The hole through which the pipes pass is over-large and certainly big enough to allow a mouse to crawl through the hole alongside the pipes and hence then have the run of the house. Mice can easily get into the garage because the gap below the garage door is wide enough to allow a mouse to squeeze under!

Clearly I need to seal the hole - but I am concerned about still allowing for expansion and contraction of the CH pipes. I don't, for example, just want to fill the hole around and between the pipes with mortar because the constant expansion and contraction of the pipes could eventually cause a leak. I then thought of silicone - but am not sure how silicone sealant would deal with the extremely hot outflow pipe from the CH boiler.

Anyone any bright ideas as to how to seal this hole up without risk of damage to the CH pipes?

Ret.

[robgraham]

Wrap a piece of cardboard around the pipe and then cement the hole.

Rob Graham

[Dieseldes]

Expanding Foam, quick and easy and the heat of the CH pipes doesn't affect it and for the small amount of expansion there is enough give when it sets, and easy to trim off when cured.

Des

[Palindrome]

Silicone sealant should be fine - even the stuff they use for glazing is good for 190C. Most of my ovenware is silicone. However, I'd get a stainless steel "wire-wool" pot scourer or two and push them in around the pipes and then apply the sealant to them whilst filling the hole. Rodents will eat sealant - but find the pot scourers a tad less appetising..

However, I'd use standard builder's PU expanding foam. Push the tube into the gap, here and there and a little squirt and it's done. IME, rodents won't eat the stuff...YMMV.

(Living near a water course on Dartmoor, I get the lot trying to get in, uninvited- water voles, badgers, otters, foxes, mice, rats, grokkles, adders, frogs, toads, you name it...) - just having to contend with field mice would be *luxury* :) ).

-- Sue

[PeterC]

Take more than a bit of filler to block up a grockle-sized hole!

[Palindrome]

My sign on the field gate saying, "Warning - LIVE FIRING. Authorised personnel only beyond this point" seems to work a treat.

Mind you, why they are quite so put off, I couldn't say - my pottery kiln isn't *that* dangerous...

-- Sue

[Ret.]

. Thanks everyone for your suggestions - I reckon the expanding foam is probably the best bet. I did also consider making an aluminium template in two pieces that would fit close enough around the pipes to keep the mice out - but give enough room for expansion. I could just screw that to the wall - but the foam would be a lot easier!

Thanks again.

Ret.

[Ash]

What's a Grockle ? ... I live up North and only have John Prescott to worry about (he lives just down the road from us)

Ash

[Cash]

Ash,

It's a tourist to Cornwall (and in Devon they're called Emmets [or possibly the other way round]).

It's generally used by the indigenous population of both counties as an

*INSULT* to those that make the 'great South West' holiday tour every year and whose cash probably keeps several thousand people in jobs (albeit seasonal).

Cash

[Midge]

I wonder if Pauline Prescott regrets not having some expanding foam handy - that way she could have kept John Prescott out of Tracey Temples hole.........

[Ash]

... are you suggesting John Prescott would have been happier munching on the expanding foam rather than Tracy Temples .... ?

[Ash]

Think I&#39;ll just stay "Up North" then with the country&#39;s finest people in Hull <

[robgraham]

The expensive option, tho&#39;

Rob Graham

[Aardvark]

Intumescent Mastic should do the job. If the hole is too big for that, mortar most of it in and then fill the rest with the intumescent.

[Bored Borg]

wire wool

old brillo pad should be fine if you give it a quick spray with wd40 or such

mousies can&#39;t gnaw through it.

If you smear a drop of _proper_ hot pepper sauce on the inside they won&#39;t even go anywhere near it. Google for Mad Dog 357 sauce. About 180 times hotter than tabasco. Lasts for years. Handle with care. Seriously.

[John]

Marry the woman that owns it!!

John

[robgraham]

But it&#39;ll eat a hole in the pipe in under ten minutes.

Rob Graham

[Burner]

Bypassing all the jokes and innuendos, generally speaking, compo (sand & cement) is quite sufficient.

Recently removed 30 year old boiler installation in my own home, with pipework local to boiler encased in cement. No leaks, not even any pipe corrosion.

If you want to take precautions split a length of overflow pipe and slip that over the pipe before you entomb it. Do two pieces at 180 degrees if pipe is too large in diameter.

If you do not encase a fitting, or some other irregular feature within the cement closure the pipe will not be firmly held and will move within the cement by expansion. This can be demonstrated by the fact that after 30 years my encased pipes could be tapped out of their "prison" by a few light taps with a hammer.

I still have 30 year+ pipes encased with no probs.

[Ret.]

OK -thanks for that. Save me buying expanding foam!

Ret.

[Ron O'Brien]

I&#39;d go with expanding foam but..... you say your air bricks are intact, so they might be but I bet a field mouse could get through one of the holes - I actually watched a house mouse come out of one in our house shortly after we moved in. The house had been empty for 9 months prior to us moving in and we could hear mice scuttling about but couldn&#39;t figure out how they got in. I was in the garden one afternoon and saw this little beastie crawl out of the air brick hole!

Not all that surprising, I saw a documentary about rats some weeks back and it was said that a rat can get through a half inch gap under a door!

Persistant little sods