Earlier today, I saw the weekend/holiday cottage of a friend of a relative. It’s been unoccupied for a month or two, and has acquired an infestation of rodents (thought to be rats) during that time. Telephone, computer networking, intercom, TV and alarms were all found to be malfunctioning (or not functioning), but the electrical installation appeared to be working OK. An ‘extensive EICR’ (and the equivalent for plumbing – see below) are going to be undertaken next week and, in preparation for that, a good few floorboards have been lifted today.
The animals have clearly had a field day with all the comms/signal cables (telephone Cat5, sky dish cable and TV coax, alarms, intercom etc.) – some have been totally gnawed through in multiple places, with a lot of sheathing and insulation gnawed in other places. However, in terms of what has so far been exposed, the electrical installation (we think mid-late 80’s – metric PVC wiring, with a whole-house RCD) seems to be largely unscathed. We saw two or three places where sheathing had been attacked a bit, but nowhere did we seen any damage etending to core insulation. FWIW, I did a quick ‘whole installation’ IR test, and it seemed fine. They’ve also ‘had a go’ at some plastic water pipes but thankfully have not penetrated any.
It could, of course, be that more extensive inspection will reveal other damage to the electrical wiring but, assuming it doesn’t, I wondered whether this is a known phenomenon – i.e. is there something about ‘small round cables’ that attracts rodents, in preference to electrical wiring cables? Do their genes perhaps tell them that chewing the latter can be painful, or even fatal?!
Kind Regards, John
The animals have clearly had a field day with all the comms/signal cables (telephone Cat5, sky dish cable and TV coax, alarms, intercom etc.) – some have been totally gnawed through in multiple places, with a lot of sheathing and insulation gnawed in other places. However, in terms of what has so far been exposed, the electrical installation (we think mid-late 80’s – metric PVC wiring, with a whole-house RCD) seems to be largely unscathed. We saw two or three places where sheathing had been attacked a bit, but nowhere did we seen any damage etending to core insulation. FWIW, I did a quick ‘whole installation’ IR test, and it seemed fine. They’ve also ‘had a go’ at some plastic water pipes but thankfully have not penetrated any.
It could, of course, be that more extensive inspection will reveal other damage to the electrical wiring but, assuming it doesn’t, I wondered whether this is a known phenomenon – i.e. is there something about ‘small round cables’ that attracts rodents, in preference to electrical wiring cables? Do their genes perhaps tell them that chewing the latter can be painful, or even fatal?!
Kind Regards, John
