Permanent Mouse Exclusion and Removal Pricing
I always try to be straight up with my customers; permanent mouse exclusion is more expensive than hiring an exterminator. This may cost me a few customers, but in the end I will feel better about myself and that is the most important.
Labor is what drives up the cost of exclusion. To permanently seal an average house for mice I have to spend at least half of a working day packing gaps in the foundations, sealing foundation vents, sealing gable vents, etc. Once that is done, I trap the mice inside the house and set monitoring stations to make sure that they are all gone. That will require a couple of visits. An average home might cost around $400-$500. Larger homes and older homes with more issues will take longer.
Exterminator Cost Comparison
I checked with several exterminators in the Bristol area to see how pricing for exterminator services (poison bait stations) compared to permanent exclusion services (screening and sealing entrances). Prices varied, but, in a nutshell, this is what I found:
One time visit -$75
30 day or monthly - $50 - 180
90 day or quarterly - $85 - 240
Prices seemed to hinge on several factors. Insect control services were always included in with the mouse services and different chemicals with different life expectancies were used depending on the length of the contract that you signed up for. Also I expected that the number of visits that were included varied. If you had a sudden infestation of some type of bug (excluding termites and bedbugs) they would give you a free visit to come and deal with it.
Major Cost Savings
In comparison, exterminators charge a monthly fee and contracts go on forever. After a few months, those monthly fees start to add up. For the sake of comparison, lets say you are only spending $50 per month (an average monthly cost for a long term contract). You will have spent $600 at the end of the first year. $600 would about cover a good sized permanent exclusion project. At the rate of $600/year, you will spend $2700 on mouse extermination over a period of five years. Assuming that you spent $540 on your exclusion, you would save $2160 with mouse exclusion vs. extermination over a five-year period.
Mouse exclusion is a superior service when compared to mouse extermination services provided by pest control companies. The reason for this is a key difference in the operating philosophy. Exterminators use poison to kill the mice that are currently in the home, while doing nothing to keep mice from coming back. The Wildlife Company, LLC does just the opposite. We focus on sealing the home against mice to keep mice from reinvading the home and then trapping the existing mice out of the house. Yes, in the short term, permanently eliminating mice from your home is more expensive than having an exterminator come by every month, but it is worth it. In the long run, it will save you money and give you better peace of mind.
How Much Can They do For You In a Half an Hour
With some research, I learned that extermination companies spend between an hour and an hour and a half on their first visit to inspect and set up. After that, each successive visit is a quick stop and run. The first visit is supposed to be the “big one” where they seal up those mouse entrances. (Some companies don’t even offer to plug up the holes.) How in the world are they going to find and seal all the entrances in an hour, much less plug all of them up? Good work takes longer than that - I know!
I would expect to be at a home excluding mice half a day at a minimum, for an “easy” home. Most homes would take more time than that. If the exterior has enough texture (brick for instance) that the mice can climb it, I would expect to be there a much longer length of time to cover entrances at a height - something like that might take all day or possibly run into a second day. The primary factor that determines cost is how much time it takes to cover all the entrances.
Quality exclusion work means completely sealing mice out of a home and involves making permanent improvements to the home to keep mice out. If you want good exclusion work done, you need someone with good work ethic (and maybe a little bit obsessive compulsive). There is a lot of sealing cracks and entrances and it takes more time to find and fill all these entrances than it does to toss a poison packet and walk away. There is no way that a home can be excluded for mice in an hour. Exterminators are depending on the poisons to do the job. That is why they are called exterminators not “excluders”.
Save Money Treating Poisoned Pets
Dying mice do not behave normally. They stagger, wander aimlessly, sit motionless in the open, and are much easier targets for cats and dogs than normal mice. The rodent in question has a lethal dose of poison in its system that might then be consumed by your pet. Depending on the dose and size of your pet, this could make your pet sick (or worse) and result in a visit to the vet...another hidden cost that the exterminator didn’t mention at the start. Mice that are outside your home don’t need to be poisoned, and are not a threat to your pet. In the event that a mouse does slip through the mouse exclusion work and gets eaten, the only bad thing you will have to put up with will be a pet with “mouse breath”.
Factors that Determine Price
Because homes are all different, pricing for a mouse exclusion project varies. Here a list of factors that can contribute to the cost of a project:
Age of a home - Older homes often tend to have more cracks and rotted wood to have to repair or fill.
Materials Used in the Home – Concrete, if it is in good condition, is very rodent resistant. Wood, on the other hand, can rot or be gnawed out allowing passage. Wood exterior homes may need more work.
Texture of the Exterior – Brick or wood allow for easy climbing of the home's exterior. This allows mice to reach the high parts of a home and makes them vulnerable. If this is a problem, higher parts of the house will have to be treated.
Vents - Sadly, few vents are built to resist rodents. Most manufacturers are thinking bugs when the pick the screen type for their product. We retrofit a lot of vents to keep rodents out.
Save on Dead Mouse Removal
You would think that removing dead mice from inside the walls would be included in a mouse exterminator’s contract because you are likely to wind up with some. This is a good question to ask before you sign up. I think that it usually doesn’t. Removing a dead mouse in the wall may involve cutting a hole in the drywall and/or spraying to control the stink. By the time we spray down the affected area and repair drywall, dead mouse removal could easily cost over $500. Lots of people choose to just suffer through the stink because actually finding the dead mouse is something of an Easter Egg hunt and is not always guaranteed to produce a dead mouse. Although it is true that a mouse could kick the bucket of natural causes inside your walls; mice that are outside can’t die in your walls...period! (Another good reason to keep mice outside.)
Whole Home Coverage
High climbing species like squirrels are much more likely to enter the home at a height and areas around the foundation are not likely to be a problem. Conversely, nonclimbing “on the ground” species like skunks only enter a home at ground level. So, potential entrances that are at a height are not a problem. Mice are willing to enter a home both at a high entry point close to the roofline and near the foundation. This means that the entire home must be excluded from the foundation up. In comparison, this means that, with mice, there is actually more area to be covered when they are excluded than other species and this can affect the price.
Final Trapping
Once exclusion is complete, trapping inside the house will be necessary to remove any mice that might be left inside the house. Generally speaking, we spend a lot less time trapping than other companies. Once a home is sealed up and you aren’t trapping all the mice from the “great outdoors,” you don’t need to work as hard getting rid of them.
Trapping is usually done on a per visit basis and the number of visits is determined in part by the customer. If the customer is still hearing or seeing signs of mice, trapping will continue. During trapping, the presence of mice will also be monitored. Monitoring stations are used to determine if there are still rodents in the home. Exterminators do not use monitoring stations to determine if there are still mice in the house.
What If Mice Return?
Sealing mice out of a home is harder than eliminating a larger species from the home. It is much easier to miss a small mouse-sized hole than it is to miss a raccoon-sized one. With mice, it is a good idea to keep an eye on things. If mice return and they have managed to get through a point that was mouse-proofed inside the one year warranty period, it is covered at no cost. If there is a new entrance, we charge for treating that point. Usually, the cost of treating a missed entrance is only a very small fraction of the original project.
Client Training
One of the most important parts of our service is client training. After all, the client is the one in the home and is the one most likely to see or hear a mouse. I usually teach my clients how to monitor for mice so that they can do most of their monitoring on their own. This takes a lot of the guesswork out and improves the long term success of the project