Will re-piping with PEX attract RATS?

[JoeBronx]

Am re-piping my 40 year old, 2400, sq ft. West Los Angeles English Tudor, with crawl space. Anyone familiar
about RAT's attraction to PEX? Any information appreciated! Thanks, JoeBronx

 

[havasu]

If you use rat poison, it will dehydrate them to a point of chewing thru pex to get to water.
Bottom line, no rat poison if pex is used.

 

[Snoonyb]

Use a poison based upon Coumadin, which is a blood thinner or anticoagulant.

 

[billshack]

first of do not use rat poison inside a house, the rats will eat the poison and die inside the house( maybe inside walls) and make a stink like a dead body for months to come. I have head of many instances of mice or rats eating through plastic pipe. pex, abs,
I would suggest your big problem is the rats on the pipe. so go and buy several rat traps, load the with peanut butter and check daily.

 

[bud16415]

I did my whole house in PEX 6 years ago and at that time I had heard nothing about the rodent attraction with PEX. We have every fall a couple mice that seem to find a way in as the weather gets cold and now I don’t even wait to see them to set some traps. I have been keeping an eye on the PEX and haven’t seen any sign of anything ever chewing on them. Most of my runs are not in walls or covered over.


If putting PEX in a crawl space I might look into the sheathed PEX products.


And don’t buy the brand labeled below.

 

[JoeBronx]

Thanks for all the helpful replies and suggestions! Bud, would a Parmigiano Pex be a proper substitute?
Thanks again to all!
Joe Bronx

 

[hornetd]

I have a cousin who is retired from the pipe fitters craft. Pipe fitters deal with high pressure piping for steam, fire sprinklers, hydraulic machinery... He obtained an auto loading pellet rifle and modified it to make it into an automatic pellet machine gun. It's compressed air supply came from a SCUBA tank with a pressure regulator. He was very popular with the building owners in Boston Massachusetts because he would throw open the door to the boiler rooms and kill as many rats as he could before they made it out of sight. The Boston City Health Department used to pay a bounty for dead rats. I don't know if they still do.

--
Tom Horne