How to Get Raccoons Out of Your Attic

Do raccoons disrupt your evenings? Do heavy thumping sounds and scratching noises wake you up at night? It seems like you have guest! Unfortunately, not the good kind - raccoons have gained access to your attic.

From a raccoon's perspective, humans make excellent neighbors. They have warm, dark attics to keep them safe, and vegetable gardens full of delicious treats. Raccoons aren’t known for being the best house guest and you’ll want to remove them from your home as soon as possible.

Once raccoons have gained access to your attic, they can cause extensive damage to your belongings and building materials. From making strange noises in the middle of the night to leaving large piles of droppings behind, racoons are considered “nuisance wildlife” for more than one reason!

Having large critters roaming in your house is undoubtedly a creepy feeling but what goes on behind the scenes is even more disturbing. The electrical wiring and insulation in your attic will be at the mercy of your new house guest and will suffer more damage with every passing day.

Raccoons may look cute and innocent, but in reality, they are capable of causing severe damage to your property and pose a serious health risk to you and your family. This means that if there are raccoons in the attic, you should take action to remove them as soon as possible.

In our experience providing raccoon removal services, longer you wait, the worse your raccoon problem will get. You should act fast if you want to keep property damage to a minimum and save yourself time and money in the long run. Fortunately, there are raccoon removal services, like Critter Stop, that can get raccoons out of your attic and make sure they don’t come back.

What Attracts Raccoons to Your Attic?

When we have provided raccoon removal services, we have found that raccoons looks for one main thing when they invade your attic, a safe and warm place to live and raise their babies. Oftentimes, raccoons initially gain entry to an attic in search of food. Your thriving garden and decorative stream or bird bath are practically a buffet for raccoons. To ensure your house doesn’t become a raccoon restaurant, make sure to avoid leaving garbage, leftovers, or pet food outside overnight.

If raccoons notice a steady supply of food and water on your property, they will soon start finding a place in your house to build their homes. Unfortunately, your warm, dark attic is the perfect spot for them to make a home and get comfortable.

Raccoons can force their way into your attic through a variety of ways. For example, if there are any tall trees near your house, raccoons may climb them to reach your roof. Once you have raccoons on your roof, it is only a matter of time before they find a way to enter your attic to build their dens and you have raccoons in your attic, likely damaging both the inside and outside of your house in the process.

What Kind of Damage Raccoons Can Cause in Your Attic?

If raccoons are living in your attic, they can cause extensive damage to crucial parts of your house, including your roofing, plumbing, HVAC system, ductwork, and electrical wiring. These pesky critters can even damage the insulation in your attic, making it less effective and unsanitary, requiring insulation removal and replacement.

As raccoon removal experts, we know that raccoons can make many openings in the roof on their way into your home. We have seen raccoons tear straight through the shingle and plywood barriers in people’s homes. Wherever it is located, these openings may allow water in and cause mold growth. Furthermore, raccoons are carriers of many contagious diseases, and their feces can carry diseases for years, so sharing space with these critters poses a serious health risk for you and your family both during and after their stay, unless properly handled.

If you believe raccoons have infested your attic, you should contact critter removal services and get an attic inspection as soon as possible to minimize damage to your home. The best course of action is seeking help immediately before the infestation becomes more severe.

4 Effective Tips to Get Raccoons Out of Your Attic

It can be quite alarming to discover you have a raccoon in the attic. The good news is there are a few simple steps you can take to keep your racoon problem under control and evict your uninvited house guest.

Inspect Your Home for Entry Points

There is no point in trapping and removing raccoons if more can sneak into your house again a few weeks (or days!) later. Therefore, the first step is to seal off all entry points. Once you have properly sealed off their entry points, any raccoons outside during the time of the work will not be able to reenter your house.

Look For Raccoon Babies

Usually, raccoons will move into your attic because they need a safe and warm space to live and raise their babies. In that case, it is crucial to find and remove the entire family. If you only remove the mother, the baby raccoons will be left behind and starve to death. Additionally, mother’s will create immense damage trying to get back to their babies, so it is important this process is handled quickly and professionally.

Leaving baby raccoons in your attic to starve without their mother is undoubtedly a cruel way to get rid of raccoons from your attic. To avoid this, you should first listen and look for the babies. However, you must be careful when removing them as a mother raccoon will be quite defensive of her babies. Furthermore, you must not forget to wear gloves and goggles while removing the little ones.

Remove Raccoons by Trapping

Once you have located the baby raccoons, it is time to address the mother raccoon directly. Live trapping is one of the most effective methods for raccoon removal. For the best results, you should set traps near the raccoon's den. You can also use their favorite foods, such as cat food, fruit, or even marshmallows as bait to attract them towards the trap. Raccoons are both clever and strong creatures, so it is important you use a trap that is capable of handling the job. Some of our favorite traps can be found here.

Once you have successfully trapped the raccoon, it will be your responsibility to relocate the entire family somewhere safe. However, it is worth keeping in mind that removing raccoons by yourself involves many risks.

In order to avoid all the challenges of raccoon removal, an easier option is to contact a professional raccoon removal service. They will locate the racoons, remove them from your home, and clean up your attic in the quickest and safest way possible.

Clean Up and Repair the Attic

Once the raccoons have been successfully removed, it is time to clean up the mess and repair the damage that has been caused in your attic, and this is no small job.

First, you must dispose of the large piles of feces that the raccoons left behind. Given their size, and the seriousness of the diseases they can carry, you may also have to replace the attic insulation if the raccoons have heavily contaminated it. An additional benefit of removing and replacing the insulation is that the removal will allow a more thorough inspection of damaged duct work and wiring that may have resulted from the raccoon’s time in your attic.

What Is the Cost of Raccoon Removal From the Attic?

The last thing a homeowner wants to know is that raccoons have built a den in their attic. The attic is a crucial part of your house and your electrical wiring, insulation, pipes, and belongings are all at risk while a raccoon is present.

Dealing with a raccoon infestation all by yourself involves a lot of risks. Dealing with these destructive critters comes with a lot of headaches, and can even be dangerous, so contacting a professional raccoon removal company is the safest and most efficient way to fix your raccoon problem. With all of the complications of getting rid of raccoons you must be wondering, “how much does raccoon removal cost?”

In Texas, the average cost of live trapping and relocation of raccoons is around $250- $600. It is important to note that the removal and relocation cost also depends on the severity of infestation. If babies are present, the removal cost can be anywhere from $400 to $900.

However, this does not include the “exclusion” work needed to seal the home from future critters. While the price of exclusion work can vary significantly depending on the size and style of your home, most homes in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex could expect a price of $500 - $1,500 to seal their home, depending on how many critters are being sealed out. For example, raccoon-sized holes are fewer and further between than mice-sized holes (about the size of a dime).

Once the raccoons are gone it’s time to clean the mess they left behind. If you don't want tackle the cleanup process by yourself, you can get help from our raccoon removal experts. They will not only clean up the attic but will also sanitize the area. While the price is driven by square footage and the maneuverability of your attic, most homeowners in Dallas-Fort Worth can expect to $300+.

Critter Stop’s fogging / sanitation process not only aims to kill the germs and microbacteria in your attic, which can carry many diseases, but also kill all of the pheromones, biological markers, and urine markers that critters inevitably leave behind that would just reattract other animals in the future.

What Will Be the Cost to Fix Any Damage Caused by Raccoons in the Attic?

If a raccoon or a large group of raccoons gain access to your attic, they can cause a tremendous amount of structural damage within a short time. Unfortunately, the range of the cost is too wide to be helpful since there are so many home features that raccoons could potentially damage, between wiring, ductwork, insulation, roofs, etc., but we have seen customers spend well into the 5 figures repairing their attic.

Conclusion

A raccoon in the attic can cause damage worth thousands of dollars. From contaminated insulation to ripped-up ductwork, damaged electrical wires, and piles of fecal droppings, a raccoon infestation is a huge nuisance and not something to take lightly.

A good approach getting raccoons out of your attic is to consult with a reliable raccoon removal company. Critter Stop is a reliable company in Texas that provides a wide range of animal removal services. We will not only help you remove the raccoons from your attic but will also help you avoid future raccoon infestations. These highly destructive raccoons just want a home to call their own but it doesn’t have to be yours!