How to Stop Animals Nesting in Your Garage
Whether you use your garage to store your pride and joy, or use it to store old household items, there’s certainly one thing you don’t want to be taking up space in your garage - animals! To find out how to stop animals of all kinds from getting into your garage, keep reading…
What types of animals get into garages?
You’d be surprised at how many different types of animals seek out shelter in garages.
Aside from the obvious culprits like mice, rats and small birds, it’s not unheard of for homeowners to discover that bats and raccoons have taken up residence in their garage!
And, there’s a good reason for this.
Garages offer a warm, dry, sheltered place for animals of all kinds to have a reprieve from the elements. Animals in garages is a particular issue in those states that are subject to harsh cold winters, such as upper East Coast and Midwest states.
However, even in warmer locales such as the West Coast, you’ll often find that small critters such as lizards seek out sanctuary in garages, too.
In short, no matter where you live in the lower 48 - it’s likely that animals may be trying to make a home in your garage…
Why is it important to keep animals out of your garage?
There are a whole host of reasons why you should actively prevent animals from taking up residence in your garage. These reasons include:
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Damage to the structural fabric of the garage. Birds, mice and other animals can cause damage to walls, wiring, plumbing and more.
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Damage to the contents of the garage. Whether you’ve got items stored in boxes, or an auto or two, animals can cause a variety of damage to these things.
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Diseases. Animals such as raccoons and mice can carry infectious diseases such as typhus, rabies, as well as parasites.
- Attack. Some animals such as raccoons - particularly if they are protecting their young - can be prone to attack. This is especially true if they are surprised.
With these points in mind, we’re sure you’ll agree that it’s best to keep animals out of your garage.
The question is, how?
In the next section, we’ll outline the best ways to prevent animals from getting into your garage.
How to stop animals getting into your garage
Below, you’ll find GaraDry’s top tips to prevent animals of all kinds from getting into your garage.
Keep things tidy!
First and foremost, you can make your garage less appealing to potential new ‘residents’ by reducing the amount of clutter and generally keeping things tidy.
Should you keep your garage filled with boxes, old items of furniture etc., then you’re effectively creating an environment in which unwanted pests and animals can hide and make themselves at home.
If you must store items in your garage, then ensure they are stored in things like plastic containers with sealable lids. These will stand up much better to potential ‘invasion’ than things like cardboard boxes.
It’s also highly recommended that you don’t keep trash in your garage. Although it can be tempting to chuck trash into your garage rather than traipse down to the garbage can, trash is like a magnet to mice, rats and other animals!
Remove sources of food
One of the main reasons that an animal will be attracted to your garage is if it can smell a food source.
So, if you tend to keep things like dog food or bird seed in your garage, it’s time to move them into your home.
If you absolutely must keep food sources in your garage, then do your best to keep them sealed in a container that’ll prevent their scent from being detected by animals.
Remove firewood
Garages do tend to offer an ideal environment for the storage of firewood, being dry and reasonably well ventilated.
However, small animals such as mice love to make their nests in piles of firewood.
If you’re serious about keeping animals out of your garage, then we’d recommend moving your firewood outside into a dedicated log shed/log store.
Insulate your garage walls
If your garage has cavity walls, then you may find that these can become home to smaller animals such as mice.
This is because the space within cavity walls tends to be warm and dry, plus if the inner section of your walls are made with drywall, then it won’t take much gnawing for a mouse to get in there…
You can prevent this from happening by filling your cavity walls with a polyurethane spray foam. This will fill up the cavity, removing any space where a mouse could make a nest.
Doing this not only has the benefit of preventing animals from nesting in your cavity wall, but it makes your garage far better insulated, keeping it warmer and reducing your energy costs.
Tip - it’s possible to buy polyurethane spray foam which contains rodent repellent. This will prevent rodents from gnawing on it.
Install a garage door weather seal
One of the most common ways in which animals gain access to garages is via the gap that is present under many garage doors.
A lot of garage floors aren’t particularly level. This means that even when the garage door is closed, there are at least one or two gaps at the bottom that’ll allow mice and other rodents to gain access to your garage and set up home.
The best way to eliminate this gap is to install a garage door weather seal.
Shop GaraDry® Residential Garage Door Threshold Seals
By choosing a high-quality threshold seal from a manufacturer like GaraDry® you’ll not only prevent animals, but other annoying things like water, wind and litter from getting into your garage.
Here at GaraDry®, we recognize that garage doors come in all shapes and sizes and that garage floors can be all sorts of uneven. For that reason, we offer garage door threshold seals in a series of heights:
- ½ inch garage door seal.
- ¾ inch garage door seal.
- 1 inch garage door seal.
- 1 ¼ inch garage door seal.
- 1 ½ inch garage door seal.
- 2 inch garage door seal.
GaraDry’s residential threshold seals are made from a high-quality, fully recyclable durable vinyl. They are secured to the garage floor using our specially developed adhesive and sealant to create a consistent barrier across the bottom of your garage door.
Fill or seal cracks
Is your garage on the older side? Then it may have a few cracks or holes in the structure of the building which can provide easy access for unwanted animals…
This is especially the case if parts of the building fabric are made from materials that mice and rodents can chew through, e.g. wood or plastic.
Take some time to inspect the complete fabric of your garage, check around the bottom and top of each wall and around any portals e.g. garage doors, side doors. Do this around both the outside and inside of your garage.
If you spot a crack or hole, then block it up. You can easily block most small holes using an expanding foam. For larger holes or cracks, we’d recommend sealing them up with a sheet of aluminum or other material that cannot be chewed or gnawed through.
Keep the area around your garage free of bushes
Should you have bushes surrounding your garage - particularly if they are butting up against your garage walls - then you will want to remove them, or at the very least, severely cut them back.
Why? Because bushes are attractive to many animals. Should an animal make a bush by your garage home, it probably won’t be long before they move into your garage.
Use rodent repellent
An easy and straightforward preventative measure is to spray a rodent repellent around the bottom of your garage walls and entrance.
If you’re a bit wary of using a commercial, chemical repellent spray, then it’s possible to make a home-made repellent instead. Simply take two tablespoons of hot pepper sauce and mix in a gallon of water with several drops of liquid soap. Spray this solution around the bottom of your garage walls and entrance, and you’ll find it achieves a similar effect to commercial rodent repellent.
Install ultrasonic mouse repellers
Another novel way in which you can prevent animals such as mice from nesting in your garage is to install ultrasonic repellers.
These devices work by broadcasting a series of fluctuating sound waves. These ultrasonic waves are unpleasant to the ears of mice and rats, deterring them from going into your garage.
Luckily, these soundwaves are undetectable by human hearing!
Keep your garage clean, tidy and free of pests with GaraDry®
GaraDry’s range of residential threshold seals are an essential part of any garage project. They’re the perfect way to protect the inside of your garage from rainwater, dirt, debris and - of course - pests.
In fact, our garage door threshold seals are so highly regarded that they’ve been awarded the King’s Award for Enterprise in the UK.