I'm doing up a place in the sticks where mice often wander in from time to time and I would like to use plastic pipe but I'm worried about the mice making a meal of it, especially because the old wiring in the place was well chewed. Does anyone know if it would be OK to cover the pipe with concrete or is there some problem with this?
i had a call back recently because the client could hear water 'hissing' within the boxing. no doubt of a leak - i thought the speedfit coupler i had used had failed until i broke into the boxing to get to it. bluddy mouse had chewed through the plastic pipe. hope he got a belly full of water! one incident has put me right off plastic pipe.
Use the Speedfit conduit that is made for the plastic pipe. It is definitely rodent proof as I have had occasion to test it against a rat infestation. Make all the runs of pipe under (or in concrete) floors without joins. Only join the pipe in accessible places. You should be able to pull the old pipe out of the conduit and replace it if required.
Use the Speedfit conduit that is made for the plastic pipe. It is definitely rodent proof as I have had occasion to test it against a rat infestation. Make all the runs of pipe under (or in concrete) floors without joins. Only join the pipe in accessible places. You should be able to pull the old pipe out of the conduit and replace it if required. I once found the skeleton of a mouse in an attic, it must have been there years cos it was just bones but it's jaws were still around the lighting cable that had electrocuted it. Apparently they like the cellulose in the plastic.
PVC insulation is relatively soft and rodents can get their teeth into it. The plastic conduit material is harder and their teeth don't make a dent. In the case I mentioned, they chewed their way through 3 washing machine hoses, one garden tap plastic hose connection, 3 electrical flexes and various other assorted items. They also consumed 750g of rat poison before the corpses started to appear. Total body count (including the cat's contribution) was 11. The conduit was used to protect the replacement hoses and flexes. I made the mistake of leaving the last 3" of one hose unprotected and the next morning there was the usual flood in the kitchen.
Thanks for the contributions lads, I think it's got to be a copper job. The place is an old chapel which I'm doing up, which because it costs thousands to get anything done to(listed.......don't touch them with a barge pole), and because a lot of the stuff I've had to do myself I couldn't bear the thought of having to rip up floors or plaster and re-do stuff once it's finished (just lazy basically).
(An old thread, I know...) We are having a big issue with copper pipes being eaten by the local water (or what the 'new' water treatment plant puts into it) on our remote west-coast-of-Scotland island. Pipework that was installed only 21 years ago has failed with pin-***** holes... We have lots of rats, too and I've looked into the issues of plastic pipe and rats before and shortly thereafter I was shown a plastic Hep2-O bend that had very obviously been chewed through by a rat (tooth marks too big for a mouse). The theory I came across (unsubstantiated) is that some types of rat poison make rats very thirsty and they can hear the water moving through the pipes and eat them to get at it... Not entirely convinced, myself, but I'm wondering if the much harder actual plastic pipe (harder than the fittings?) combined with copper push-fit fittings would be the answer to both problems...
Was it the plastic pipe or a fitting that got chewed? I ask as I wonder if the pipe itself (or some types at least) are much tougher plastic than the fittings... What make of pipe and fitting were they (I appreciate it was a long time ago!). If some types of plastic pipe are better at resisting rodent chewing (if not immune) the possibility arises of using plastic pipe but copper push-fit fittings.
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