Just discovered a disadvantage of shallow brick footings: a large rat managed to tunnel right under them and up inside where the water and waste pipes enter and leave the building.
Caught the rat with an electronic trap and filled the hole down to the bottom of the footings with a couple of buckets of limecrete, using lime, sand and gravel.
Had to do it twice more because another rat twice bypassed the limecrete by digging a longer tunnel, partially removing the still soft limecrete as it went.
This photo shows the top of the pad of limecrete, between the brick flowerbed retaining wall and the house wall. The limecrete is smeared with dark brown Jeyes Fluid in the hope that the foul smell will finally put off the rats.
I suppose the rats are in their natural habitat – we live after all in an old farmyard!
saving The Old Brewhouse 