Rats Chew $8,000 Damage To CCTV Cables

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Brian Rhodes
Mar 08, 2014
IPVMU Certified

I have always been curious to know how widespread this problem is: Rats damage Inverness' CCTV fiber optic cables.

The estimate damages are £4,800 (about $8000 USD), so it seems to me they opted to replace an entire segment not just resplice the damages.

Rats often chew cables and even conduit to keep their teeth length manageable, a point we address in our Rodent Proof Cabling note.

Using armored cabling jackets is expensive, but as evidenced by this story repairing is costly as well!

I'm curious - how big is this problem in your experience?

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #1
Mar 08, 2014

Feeding the rats with cheese would be a lot cheaper. <g> I'd try to get rid of the rodents instead.

JH
Jim Hall
Mar 10, 2014

Feeding the rats with cheese would be a lot cheaper.

But a diet of only cheese is not healthy; rats benefit from a high fiber diet just like us...

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #1
Mar 10, 2014

A diet of plastic is good? Seriously, the cheese would only be bait in order to poison them. You don't want to help them grow.

JH
Jim Hall
Mar 10, 2014

Seriously, I was joking, but if you're not, trust me you don't wanna poison the vermin inside walls...

RM
Richard Martinez
Mar 08, 2014

It is a constant problem, specially in housing complex. You need to use conduit all the time or rodent proof conduit to help eliminate the damage.

JH
John Honovich
Mar 08, 2014
IPVM

In housing complexes, is it because there are a lot more rats there in general?

RM
Richard Martinez
Mar 08, 2014

Well, I should had said any city building has this problem. Rats love to eat cable. We all know that rats outnumber humans. For this reason we use conduit or rodent proof conduit for that reason. You just can't run free wire on these types of installations, period. Is only asking fir future call backs.

JS
Jeppie Sumpter
Mar 08, 2014
IPVMU Certified

We've probably ended up with a few thousand in damage from squirrels over the last 5 or so years. Nothing major given the size of our cable plant which is 2000+ miles of inside plant copper and a couple hundred of outside plant fiber and copper. Most has actually been interior UTP isolated to two major locations and then a small fiber issue at another spot.

Rv
Rogier van der Heide
Mar 10, 2014

We don't have much troubles with rodents eating trough our cables.

They do, however, seem to have some intrest in our Scotchlok's! They fill themselves with silicone once you press them down.
So we imagine there is a good looking mouse running about with some firm boobies.

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Tony Darland
Mar 10, 2014
IPVMU Certified

We've only had one incident that I know of over the last 13 years or so. They chewed the cables in an access point at the edge of our property.

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Ari Erenthal
Mar 10, 2014
Chesapeake & Midlantic

At one job, we had a serious rat problem. So I bought the hottest hot sauce I could find and doused the wires. Then we had a serious rat problem and a serious ant and roach problem, too.

My boss laughed until he cried, until I told him I was serious and also that I'd already done it.

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Daniel S-T
Mar 11, 2014

Has not been a huge problem for me personally. I know squirells chew through the Telephone/TV lines all the time in my area. But as for security I get the odd chew on some Station Wire in a house, but not enough to warrant taking extreme measures such as conduit for everything, or rat proofing stuff.

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