Took me 3 hours to find a short in a crawlspace because a rat chewed through romex

House out in the suburbs near Denver. Homeowner kept tripping a breaker for their basement lights. I figured it was a bad switch or something simple. Crawled under there with my headlamp and meter, spent almost 2 hours tracing the whole run. Finally found it behind a joist where a rat had gnawed through the outer jacket and nicked the hot wire. Barely visible unless you shined the light at the perfect angle. Anyone else deal with rodent damage way more than you expected?

2 comments

2 Comments

hayes.elliot16d ago

Man, that's brutal. I feel like every other job I've done lately has some kind of pest damage hidden somewhere, it's wild how much they can mess up a house without anyone noticing until something breaks.

leog6815d ago

Right? It's like the house is playing hide and seek with you, except the prize is a rotten floorboard. Termites are basically the ninjas of the construction world, nobody sees them coming until they've already eaten the whole dojo lmao. My buddy had a place where the only clue was a weird bump in the living room carpet, turned out the subfloor was basically sawdust holding hands. Gotta love finding out your biggest investment has been a buffet for bugs the whole time, real fun surprise lol.