Mice eating my dishwasher!

Tim Nicholson · 2004-12-14T10:06:15+00:00

When I replaced our kitchen a couple of years ago, I spent aconsiderable amount of time and effort making sure the walls andfloors behind the units were 100% rodent proof - or so I thought. (welive in a 150 year old house in the scottish countryside, so at thistime of year we usually expect a few 'visitors'....)Anyway, the dishwasher packed in a few weeks ago, and as it was stillunder waranty, on the order of SWMBO I 'called a man in' as you do. Hetold me then that a small mouse (apparently he could tell from theteethmarks) had chewed the hoses, and water had leaked into the basepan, causing a safety valve to cut in, which is what had caused themachine to stop working. He warned that unless we took action, we'dhave the problem again, so traps and poison were laid, and theinevitable mouse bodies duly disposed of. However - they stoppedappearing about a week or so ago, so we believed we'd overcome theproblem, but last night the dishwasher stopped again, with the samesymptoms as before....I realise that the possibility is that one ofthe mice had chewed a hose as it's main course before trying the fatalcheeseboard, but i'd like to be certain, so.....This time, (assuming it's the same problem when I pull the damn d/wout to check) - I'd like to replace the hoses with somthing 'armoured'if possible - anyone know whether there's a supplier of such a thing,or is there something else I could use to wrap them in - that wouldact as a rodent deterrent? I'm also going to make some sort of solid'cage' to fit around the d/w from floor to about 12 inch height, sothat any future rodent explorer will have difficulty reaching thetasty plastic pipes!Anyone got any other ideas? Ripping the kitchen out to find out wherethe little sods got in *isn't* an option I've been informed......CheersTim

Dec 14, 2004 Last reply: 4 years ago 27 Replies

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Brian Gaff (Sofa 4 years ago

Well a kindof grill filter in the waste pipe seems to be the answer to this one, you could make on as long as you make sure its rat proof, probably made of ally extrusion in some kind of jointing piece. I'd be more worried about where else the rats maybe. Brian

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Brian Gaff (Sofa 4 years ago

Well rats and mice are everywhere, and really I'd not want either infesting my house. Brian

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Andrew 4 years ago

Rats came up the kitchen waste pipe of my cousins house many years ago. It was a timber-framed house and the ground floor was chipboard on top of expanded polystyrene slabs (house built in the 1980's).

The rats chewed a hole in the waste pipe and the leak got under the floor, making the EPS degrade and disintegrate so that the floor and kitchen units all slowly sagged.

Luckily house insurance paid for the (expensive) repairs.

Andrew

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peter mice hater 4 years ago

many things are not expensive to replace , look at cost of car parts, then final bill. I do not think Your comment has added much, wood is perfect -that had not been gnawed at. , mousetraps need to be at least daily inspected to be humane.

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Craig papp 4 years ago

I used inch and a quarter flexible conduit go to amazon flexible metal conduit

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zaq 4 years ago

You are a tad late after 17 years, stupid.

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Brian Gaff 4 years ago

Don't you feel somebody in charge of distribution of Usenet really should cut Home Owners Club from being able to post to the outside world until they fix their awful software? Brian

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Rob Morley 4 years ago

They're probably just scraping content from Google Groups, you won't stop that unless Google takes exception. The proper way to do it would be to have peering agreements with other server operators.

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