Squirrel control › Long Melford
A fair number of loft noises are not an animal at all, and it is worth ruling those out before assuming otherwise — particularly in an old Long Melford house, which will produce plenty of them.
Each has a signature, and each can be tested from indoors.
Water pipes
Sounds like: ticking, tapping or knocking, often in a regular series. The test: it is tied to the heating and hot water rather than to the time of day. Turn the heating off for an evening and see whether it stops. Expansion noise starts when the system fires and eases as it settles.
Roof timbers
Sounds like: single sharp cracks, often startlingly loud. The test: temperature. It happens on the first warm afternoon after cold weather, and again as a roof cools rapidly in the evening. It is isolated cracks rather than sequences, and there is never movement between them.
Wind on the roof
Sounds like: tapping, scraping, or a rhythmic knock. The test: it only happens in wind, and it stops when the wind drops. Common causes are a loose aerial cable, a lifted tile, a slack gutter bracket or a cowl.
Tanks and valves
Sounds like: filling, trickling, or a shuddering hum. The test: it follows a toilet flush, a bath, or the washing machine. A ball valve that has started to hum or hammer is a very common cause of a mysterious loft noise.
Birds
Sounds like: light fluttering, scratching and chirping, confined to the eaves or to a chimney flue. The test: season and location. It is a spring and early-summer noise, it is at the very edge of the roof rather than overhead, and there is usually vocal noise with it. A jackdaw in a chimney is an echoing scrabble in a flue, not a thump above a ceiling.
Insects
Sounds like: a faint rustling or a continuous low buzz. The test: a wasp nest in a roof space produces a steady hum rather than movement, builds through the summer, and is often accompanied by wasps at a specific point outside.
Next door
Sounds like: anything at all. The test: in a terrace or semi, sound carries through a party wall and along a continuous roof space. Worth considering when a careful survey of your own roof finds nothing.
The one test that separates all of these from a squirrel: movement. Pipes, timber and wind make noise; they do not travel. A sound that starts at one point and finishes at another is an animal, and nothing on this page will do that.
Old houses in particular
Long Melford has a great deal of building with exposed timber, irregular roof structures and generations of added pipework. Such buildings are simply noisier than modern ones, and the household usually knows the ordinary repertoire well enough to notice when something new joins it. That instinct is worth trusting — a noise that is genuinely new in a house you know well is worth looking into.
Questions
How do I tell pipe noise from gnawing?
Pipe noise is regular and metallic and tied to the heating. Gnawing is coarse, irregular and unrelated to anything you are doing.
It only happens in wind. Should I still worry?
As a noise, no — but something loose on a roof is worth looking at from the ground, because a lifted tile is also a way in.
Could it be bats?
Possibly, and that matters: all UK bats and their roosts are legally protected. If bats are suspected the work stops and specialist advice is taken.
Squirrel Control Long Melford
Squirrel control in Long Melford is £280 fixed cost. Proofing work, where it is needed afterwards, is £180. Call 01502 630 122 and tell us what you have heard or seen.
For squirrel control in Long Melford, call 01502 630 122, or read the Long Melford squirrel control page.