Raccoons Damage Soffits, Roofs & Vents

In last week’s post we profiled a raccoon that was getting into a house at a water weakened roof edge.

This week we have two more examples of destructive raccoons that are forcing their way into structures.

The theme in all these examples is that when raccoons find an opportunity and get used to using a particular building, they are going to need removed and repairs will be needed.

Having raccoons in a structure is no fun! See what we mean in these examples.

A Very Persistent Raccoon

There are a number of sources which recommend blocking nuisance animals to keep them out. In our industry we refer to this as an exclusion.

Excluding animals is a very important step.

But, as we’ve shown many times before, just trying to keep animals out that have already gotten in is often a losing battle.

We believe that removal of the offending animals goes hand-in-hand with repairing the area.

Here is an example of a raccoon job where we were called after it was realized that just trying to keep the animals out was not going to work.

As Ryan showed you, just trying to keep the destructive raccoons out is not working. In this case, they just changed points of entry.

Exclusion & Removal are a team!

What we’ve found many times is that nuisance animals that get shut out of a home just find another way in and cause more damage in the process.

We believe that REMOVAL prior to the sealing up process is very important. This takes the conditioned raccoons (often a generational problem) out of the mix. This gives the repair/exclusion of the entry point a much higher likelihood of preventing a reoccupation by raccoons.

Raccoons Easily Remove Soffit Panels

The raccoons in the first example had no issue removing shingles and vents to get into a home.

Raccoons often don’t even work that hard as one of their preferred ways into homes is through the soffit panels.Soffit panels are usually just snapped up into channel edges or lightly nailed at best. They are easily removed when flexed and many become loose on their own in some instances because of aging and weather.

Check out the damage the raccons have done to this duplex’s soffit panels.

Simply putting the panels back in place is not going to keep the raccoons out of this structure. They will be right back and the time putting the panels back in place will be wasted.

This property need soffit replacement and reinforcement with a large dose of raccoon removal.

Removal (trapping) and repair are the winning combination.