How to keep rats away from wires?

Question

I live in a shop house, my below unit is rented to a restaurant, and hence rats are not uncommon in my house or my ceiling.

But for the purpose of this question, I just want to know how can I keep the rats away from wires/cables on my ceiling? My shop house suffered electricity outage a few times because the rats were chewing away the wires-- and electric short-circuiting themselves in the process.

I am thinking about calling pest control, but before that, I want to know whether is there any DIY solution or not.

Answer 1

Commercially available traps or a pellet gun are a couple DIY options.

However, if you have a restaurant below you that has rats I would call the health department or your equivalent. The restaurant should pay for the pest removal not you.

Good luck!

Answer 2

The only real option is to seal off any openings with wire mesh that cannot be chewed through. In many cases rats will enter through a single chokepoint, often a water or sewer pipe hole that has a gap. If you can find that chokepoint and carefully block it off with secure wire mesh you can keep them out. Note that you can use something like JB Weld to affix wire to a pipe.

Restaurants should not be leaving out garbage in open containers for rats. That is a health code violation.