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Hello, this is Ben and it’s time for another one of our Ben’s pest control podcasts. And today we want to talk to you about your plumbing vent pipe, or stack as we call it. So, when it comes to household plumbing systems, most people know that they’re drain pipes and supply lines. drain pipes allow water and waste to flow out of your home and into the sewer system. While the supply line brings the water in that fills your sinks, bathtubs and washing machines. A plumbing vent pipe works alongside your drain pipes except it doesn’t carry water. Instead it regulates the air in your plumbing system. It’s also called a vent stack or plumbing air vent. The vent pipe regulates airflow to assure waste and water flows through pipes and that drain out of your house. It prevents a vacuum that could cause slow or no drainage at all. Clean drain pipes can only do their job when the vent pipe works. Each plumbing fixture in your home requires air to move the water through the drains. The other thing you need to know about your vent pipe is that the vent pipes also are used to remove sewer gases. It is common for such gases to flow from the sewer system into your home. And this buildup of gases is not only cause a foul odor, but can also be dangerous. That is why the plumbing vent pipe is on your roof it is installed away from things so that way it gets out above the house. Now, you may be wondering why a pest control guy would want to talk to you about your vent pipes. Well, if you understand that, the sewer system all works together. And in our sewer systems, we have bugs, we have things like rats, and sometimes they will try to make their way up those pipes and into your house. So take for an example, there was a TV show on a while back where they did a show about homes that were absolutely infested with certain pests. And one of the episodes they did was about rats in a home in Phoenix. And in the episode, the homeowner could not figure out for the life of them why they kept getting rats and they hired people after people and the house was sealed, the house was completely checked out. But in their case, they had a situation where a part of the attic was not very accessible and they couldn’t get to it. So the experts finally came to the conclusion that they think there was something there that could be causing the problem. And after years and countless dollars spent, the homeowner finally did decide to open the ceiling above that part so they could see in the attic. And they found that the vent pipe actually did not extend out through the roof, it was letting out the gas in the attic. And they found the rats were accessing the house from the vent pipe. So what happens is when the vent pipe actually drains out the way it’s supposed to, if something were to come up, it would actually come out on the roof and away from the house. Now, when it comes to to animals like rats, it’s not extremely common, it does happen. But it’s it’s more likely that if the rats especially in Florida roof rats, if they can get on the roof, they are more likely to come down the vent pipe than they are to go up the vent pipe. So the reason we’re mentioning this is we have had cases in Florida and every once a while people will see on the news or on TV or, or somewhere else. And a story about a homeowner who was startled to find a snake in their toilet, a frog in their toilet, or even rats. And so what happens is, the vent pipes, in our opinion should be sealed to try to prevent that kind of access. So understand first those stories are pretty rare. They do happen there. They’re not extremely common, thank goodness, because let’s be honest, that’s something of a nightmare situation that would keep people awake at night if they thought about having to look in their toilet before they sat on it because they have no idea what’s in it. Now, in our case,
I can tell you we did have one client who was a snowbird, who went away for the summer and when they came back, their toilet seat had just been absolutely chewed up. And the conclusion we came to is that a rat had gone into the toilet and couldn’t get out of the toilet and it was using its teeth to try to grab the toilet seat to try to figure a way to get out of the toilet bowl. And it wasn’t able to so it kept grabbing and grabbing and the whole inside of the toilet seat was just chewed up from from where the rats had had not on it. So and I shouldn’t say rats, I believe it was just one and it was probably stuck there for a while. So in their situation. We found we had absolute proof that they can come up they can get into the toilets and so At bends, one of the things we tell people is we have a product that we install over those air vents on the roof. Our product is called critter quitters. They are a black hardened plastic cover that goes over and they are screwed to the vent pipe so that way, what happens is the opening at the top is not large enough for those types of creatures to get in. And those snakes and frogs are pretty uncommon when it comes to toilets. There have been cases of people have reported those as well. And my assumption, and I’m stating this upfront, it’s an assumption would be that more than likely those animals probably got in through the roof and came down more likely than they did from the sewer systems. At least in my experience in 27 years, I don’t hear of a whole lot of people calling to get snakes out of the sewer system or frogs. Now, there could be there’s an abundance of bugs in those areas for them to eat. But I think it would be a little bit harder for them to survive in that type of environment. So back to the critter quitters. We install these hardened plastic critter quitters, a lot of companies will put in what they call hardware cloth over the top of the vent pipe, which is fine. I mean, it does work. But in our experience the the problem with the hardware cloth is your vent pipe is releasing gas and that gas as it goes up through the roof can actually tarnish the metal and eventually it’ll rust out. So if you’ve got the hardware cloth wrapped around the vent pipe, and you can’t see that it’s rusted out, you’re gonna think it’s sealed, but it’s not really sealed. It’s actually wide open at the top, where with the critter quitters that we install being hardened plastic, they’re kind of tall, they stand out. They’re pretty noticeable. So if something were to damage them, I think it would be pretty obvious and pretty easy to tell that hey, there’s a problem there with that and something needs to be done. But they have been working extremely well our customers who have had us install them have all been pretty pleased with it. So if you think you might be interested in going with a critter quitters on your vent stacks, please give us a call at 772-878-1972 for a free estimate and evaluation, or check out our website at WWW dot Benz pest dot biz. Thank you and have a great day
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
