Exclusion Strategy

Standard Pest Management, Queens, N.Y., employs an exclusion strategy to keep mice out of an apartment building garbage chute.

By June Van Klaveren

Standard Pest Management, Queens, N.Y., employs an exclusion strategy to keep mice out of an apartment building garbage chute.

Take an old six-story, 72-unit apartment building in New York City, add brick-lined trash chutes filled with cracks and crevices, tons of garbage and a basement where that garbage collected, and you have a recipe for a serious mouse infestation and unhappy tenants.

The property management company for the building contacted Standard Pest Management in Queens to bid on pest control in three of their newly acquired buildings. Joshua Bloom, quality assurance director for Standard Pest Management, explains, “Inspections of the first two buildings showed no unusual pest activity but in building three, a severe mouse problem was found.”

The apartment building trash chutes previously led to garbage incinerators in the basement but now those same chutes are used to convey refuse to the trash compactor. The garbage then accumulates in the basement compacting unit until it is compacted and removed. Lined with deteriorating brick and concrete, these trash chutes provided ample harborage for mice at the base of the chutes. The building contained two separate chutes, one of which was infested, and the tenants from 10 to 15 units adjacent to that chute complained of rodent activity on higher floors.

Though the mice were harboring in the basement area, from there they scurried up the chute walls and through cracks and crevices, emerging as unwanted guests into apartments. The garbage from 72 apartments provided ample nourishment for the growing mouse population in the building.

AN EXCLUSION STRATEGY. Exclusion work is not new, but it continues to be one of the best IPM practices for preventing rodent and pest entry. Rodents can access buildings through openings as small as V inch. Modern IPM practices recommend that rodents be prevented from moving through these pathways by sealing openings.

“We knew that if we were to rely upon the superintendent to perform any kind of significant exclusion, it would not be successful, and we couldn’t take the risk of leaving it up to management to successfully eliminate the access points,” explains Bloom. “We knew that using our pest-proofing protocols was the only guaranteed solution to this problem”.

One of the tools in this protocol is Xcluder Fill Fabric, manufactured by Global Material Technologies in Buffalo Grove, Ill. The material is made from coarse stainless steel and poly fibers and is designed to form a resilient and impenetrable barrier against rodents and pests. Rodents cannot chew or push through Xcluder, which is 100-percent nontoxic and harmless to the environment, the company says. “It makes more sense to initially exclude the mice instead of relying on baiting and trapping after the pests have already made entry,” Bloom said.

In addition to Xcluder, the company used Pure Fill foam to help secure Xcluder in place in the chutes. Xcluder is designed to be extremely easy to install due to its highly flexible, compressible nature.