Trying to keep mice out of any home is difficult, but your challenges multiply if your house is made out of brick. While trying to secure my parent’s house against mice, I realized that the major problem I was having involved weep holes in brick. To deal with them, I ended up testing out a product by Rid-O-Mice called a weep hole cover.
What are Weep Hole Covers?
Photo courtesy of Wikipedia: “Open stootvoeg” by Erik Wannee
Don’t know what weep holes are? Don’t worry, most homeowners don’t know either. The first time I spotted a weep hole while I was doing my rounds looking for weaknesses in their home, I thought it was a construction flaw. But then I noticed there were more of these gaps and I did some research, and I found out what they were for.
Weep holes are small gaps between the bricks in the lower part of your wall. Usually, they look more like slots than “holes” per se; I’d have probably called them “weep slots” or “weep gaps.” They are so named because their purpose is for drainage and ventilation.
Weep holes help to prevent moisture damage and are necessary for the structural integrity of your brick house. Unfortunately, they are also a very common point of entry for mice and rats.
Other pests can also use them to gain entry, like snakes, scorpions, lizards, bees, wasps, and spiders. So to keep mice out of your house, you have to find a way to cover up your weep holes.
But you don’t want to fill them in, because then your walls will be susceptible to damage.
How Do We Keep the Pests Out?
There are a couple of common solutions to the weep hole problem. Most people cover the gaps using either plastic or metal mesh. Neither works out well because mice tend to chew right through plastic, and I know from personal experience that mesh doesn’t work well for long. The mesh either falls out (or some little critter was pulling it out) and the few that stayed in became clogged with debris.
Rid-O-Mice Weep Hole Covers are different. For one thing, they are actually designed specifically for weep holes. They form a perfect fit. They are flexible enough that you can easily push them between the bricks. Compared to other solutions I tried, they were a breeze to install!
I watched this video for the instructions:
You just pinch the sides together and push the piece in, and then it expands back to the proper size. What’s great about this is that you can use the Rid-O-Mice covers in weep holes which are different sizes. They fit in both narrower and wider gaps. And yes, you probably have them if you haven’t noticed yet. Bricklayers aren’t all that fixated on making sure weep holes are all identically sized.
What if you have a weep hole which is too short for the cover to fit? You can cut the cover down to size quickly and easily using a standard pair of sheers. Contrast this with other products, which you have to cut to size to fit (if you can at all), and even then, there is no easy way to install them, because they were not made specifically for weep holes. Trying to squeeze mesh into one of these holes is a challenge. There are usually gaps no matter what you do.
Here’s a video to show exactly how to modify the length:
The fact that these covers are actually made out of stainless steel is great in and of itself. They don’t rust or break apart like mesh does. Mice cannot chew through them. They include holes which maintain ventilation and drainage in your wall, but nothing else can get by them. Those same slots in the design are exactly what makes it easy to cut into these covers if you do need to resize them.
Do They Really Work?
Now for the big question! Did they actually keep the mice out? And the answer is, “Yes!” I had already taken care of most of the other structural gaps which were letting mice into their home by the time I got around to trying these. I had patched up most of the other problems last winter and had tried the mesh solution on the weep holes – but it didn’t hold up through this year.
After I installed the weep hole covers, so far there was a significant reduction in the number of droppings, especially in the basement area. While they are still working on cleanup and catching a few that were already inside, I think the problem has finally been solved. No more calls about mice from dear old mum – What a relief! I have a feeling the cricket population will also be greatly reduced since I’m pretty sure this is how they were sneaking into the basement as well.
How Much Do Weep Hole Covers Cost?
OK, so, a word on price is needed. You can get a pack of 20 of these for around $43. That’s not cheap, I know but not too bad either considering how easy they were to use. If you have discovered weep holes in your home, it is so worth it. Yeah, getting a roll of mesh would be a lot less expensive, but it just doesn’t get the job done or hold up over time.
The ease of use and effectiveness of this product more than makes up for the expense. It’s by far the best value I’ve found and the simplest answer for covering weep holes. It’s a specialized solution for a specialized problem!
Where Can You Buy Them?
Rid O Mice Weep Hole Covers at Amazon.com
Like pretty much everything else these days, you can buy them directly on Amazon! Which is nice since it’s a trusted way to shop online. Here is a link to their product page, so you can check them out for yourself.
You can buy them in many different quantities based on the size of your home. And incidentally – these also work well to keep other critters out like wasps, scorpions, snakes, and our personal nemesis – the cricket… Definitely a bonus!