A few weeks ago I was participating in one of the home improvement Internet forums when an issue with mice getting into the house came up.
It reminded me of the same situation we had last fall in our home.
We found one dead mouse in the basement powder room ceiling fan.
We found another one, also dead, in a drawn in the same room.
What gives? Was the noise of the home renovation projects attracting the mice? Unlikely.
Or, was the cool weather of the fall causing the vermin to look for a winter home. More likely.
What we did find, with certainty, was how the mice were getting into the house.
A broken dryer vent cover.
Above is a picture of the front of our home, specifically to the left of the front door (yes, that front door). The window you see is to the main floor laundry room. If you look closely in the lower left of that picture you will see two white squares on the wall to the lower left of the left most Pyramid Yew.
The vent cover to the right is for the dryer inside the laundry room.
The vent cover to the left is for the basement powder room’s ceiling fan.
What had happened is that, as far as we could tell, the original (or close to the original) vent covers for both the laundry room dryer and the basement powder room’s ceiling fan had not been changed, ever. Both were certainly broken.
The vent cover for the basement powder room’s ceiling fan was sufficiently broken to allow mice to enter.
So, I went to our neighbourhood building supply store and purchased replace both of the vent covers.
Most of the homes we have lived in have not had vents so close to the ground. However, both of these were placed so close to the side garden that they needed to have the covering so vermin could not enter.
Above is a picture of the vent cover for the basement powder room’s ceiling fan. Notice two things. First when the fan in the powder room is not pushing air out of the house that the three horizontal vent flaps are closed.
Second, a closer look will show the screen that resides just in side the horizontal flaps to let the air out but help block the mice from entering the vent.
And, third, notice the rather sloppy caulking all around the edges of the vent cover. This is one situation, however, when excessive caulking is better than too little so no gaps exist to let bugs inside IMO.
So, the next time you have mice or other vermin entering your house, check your vent covers in case they are broken or missing screens.
9 responses so far ↓
1 Vasile // Oct 15, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Hi!
Don’t you think that the screen spaces are a little too big for keeping mice out? AFAIK, mice can squeeze through a hole as small as a pencil.
Regards,
Vasile
2 Dan // Oct 15, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Vasile,
Thanks for the comments. Here is where my head it at. The plastic horizontal covers prevent the mice from getting in through the mesh when the dryer is not on.
When the dryer is on there is a lot of hot dryer air pushing out the plastic vertical cover strips.
I can’t see mice wanting to go against the hot air to try and squeeze through if they can.
So far after a full year, all I can say is .. no mice.
Dan
3 A // Oct 15, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Putting them higher up doesn’t always help either.
Our neighbourhood has had many problems with birds getting into the vents. The covers most people had didn’t have the mesh screen; only the flaps. If one of the flaps gets broken, falls off or stuck open… in flys the birds and they start nesting inside.
Some (birds) even go as far as lifting up the little flaps to get in.
Cheerio!
A
4 Elaine // Oct 18, 2009 at 9:15 pm
Dan, thanks for the pics, this is a huge help. I have a dryer vent with the plastic flaps just like yours. Question, how is the mesh screen (hardware cloth maybe?) affixed to the plastic vent?
5 Dan // Oct 18, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Hi Elaine (I used to teach once with an Elaine from Tennessee).
It is all one piece…..nothing to have to manually attach.
I purchased it at the local Home Depot in our area.
I hope that helps and thank you for visiting our site.
Dan
6 Karen // Oct 21, 2009 at 4:20 pm
I have just had this problem with finding a mouse in my kitchen. I thought I had been hearing things in the dryer vent but couldn’t eve be sure…until now!. So I have checked and sure enough the vent outside needs to be replaced. But in doing some checking on the DIY web site, it says never put a screen over this vent. So, I’m confused. Does the size you have used here still allow whatever lent needs to come out…come out and not cause a hazard??
TIA
Karen
7 Dan // Oct 22, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Hi Karen,
First, optimal home /renovation design should never IMO cause a dryer vent to be placed less than several feet from the ground for just this very reason. Mu gosh but ours is less than 3 inches from ground level. Geesh.
The vent was already installed when we purchased the house.
So, using the vent with the built-in screen is needed IMO to keep the mice and other vermin out of the house. Yes, they will be looking for warmer places to live when the weather turns colder.
We have had ours installed now for 2+ years and have never had a problem. We do see a little lint come out and we simply remove it. One does need to make sure that, just like the lint trap within the dryer itself, that the air from the dryer has an unobstructed access out of the home (unless one has one of those fancy ‘heat traps’ installed where the heat is kept in the home to help humidify it during the dry winter months. For someone who knows what they are doing it can work; I have just not experienced it myself.
So, I just make sure that the link does not accumulate. So far it has been miniscule amount.
I hope our experience helps,
Dan
8 Karen // Oct 28, 2009 at 5:31 pm
Thanks Dan. I did install a new (actually everything - what a pathetic job the builders did!) outside vent that came with the screen attached. I also went as far as to add a little more screening to it, just to be on the safe side. Don’t care to deal with that again! I will check it on a regular basis, not only for lint, but just to make sure all is well. Glad to hear you haven’t had any problems in 2 years!
Karen
9 Dan // Oct 28, 2009 at 5:36 pm
Hi Karen,
Thanks very much for returning to let me (and all of us) know how you made out.
Dan
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