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Small Cabin Forum / Cabin Construction / pre-construction rat "proofing"
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rlmiller
Member
# Posted: 10 Nov 2013 14:28
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Hi all,

Great forum!

I have searched and gotten some good ideas on how to attack mice/rats after building.

My wife and I are new owners of some mtn property and have started looking at off-grid cabin plans. So my question is what would you advise us to consider doing to mouse/rat proof our cabin from the start?

Rocky

toyota_mdt_tech
Member
# Posted: 10 Nov 2013 14:47
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Full footing/stemwall would be my guess. Its worked flawless for me. Can you get a cement truck to the build site? If not, it would be difficult to do this.

Post and beam, install metal flashing around taller post to keep critters from climbing the wood post. Use a metal 1/4" wire mesh on the underside just under the floor joist, insulation on the other side. You can also wrapped the rim joist in this same manner, have it wrapped around to the underside. Bird blocks between rafters/trusses, use the fine screen to keep out smaller bugs, but add a heavier wire mesh just like you would the underside of the cabin. I did this and it looks like birds tried to infiltrate the fine screen (I use only metal screen, not the plastic stuff) and I can see where they tried to pierce it with their beaks, but the larger wire mesh stopped them. So far, been 3 yrs, nothing infiltrated, not even small bugs.

rlmiller
Member
# Posted: 10 Nov 2013 21:12 - Edited by: rlmiller
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I can get a cement truck to the site. I originally was thinking of a slab, but just read an article that says not to, however it does not say why not to.

We are going to do stick construction, milling our lumber from the property, so I had thought about putting metal up 24 inches or so under the OSB sheeting.

missouriboy
Member
# Posted: 12 Nov 2013 21:03
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I had a friend with a cabin on a slab and the biggest drawback was it was cold. It took a while to heat it up in the winter and never really felt warm on the feet. That is the one reason I can think of to not do a slab.

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