The Entry Points Every Empty Cottage Has (a Walk Around the Outside)

Why it pays to walk the outside before you close up

Wildlife does not break into a cottage. Animals walk in through gaps that were already there — in a building nobody is watching for months. So the single most useful hour you can spend before you lock up is a slow lap around the outside, looking for the openings before something else finds them first.

The catch is that the gaps almost never look like a way in. The rules of thumb are smaller than people expect: a mouse only needs an opening about the size of a dime, and a red squirrel not much bigger than a golf ball. We go deeper on that small-gap principle in our guide to how mice get into closed-up cottages; the short version is that if a gap looks too tight to matter, it probably is not.

Here is how we walk a cottage, from the ground up. Follow the same four zones and you will catch most of what there is to catch.

Start at the foundation line

The foundation line is where the building meets the ground, and it is a favourite of mice and chipmunks because it is low, shaded, and easy to reach.

• The sill plate. This is the seam where the cottage’s wooden frame rests on top of the concrete or block foundation. A thin gap often opens along it — sometimes for much of the way around the building — and because it sits in shadow right at grade, it is both a common way in and an easy one to miss.
• Cracked parging. Parging is the thin mortar skim over a block or poured foundation. As it ages it flakes and crumbles, and where it lets go it opens small gaps right at ground level.
• Old utility holes. When a line gets moved or removed, the hole it left behind often stays. An abandoned pipe stub, a filled-in vent, an old conduit opening — any of them can sit open for years.

What sealing looks like here: the gap gets packed tight with stainless mesh or steel wool, then locked in behind a bead of quality exterior sealant. The metal is the part that matters — foam, caulk, and wood are all things an animal can gnaw through, while stainless mesh and steel wool resist their teeth, so the metal does the holding and the sealant simply anchors it and shuts out the weather. Crumbling parging is a different repair: it gets patched back with proper mortar, since caulk on its own does not last at grade.

Work along the walls

Next, follow the walls. This is where the everyday openings live — the ones we all stop seeing because they are part of the house.

• Vents. Dryer, kitchen range-hood, and bathroom exhaust vents all open straight to the outside, and the little flap that is meant to keep weather out is often cracked, stuck, or propped open with old lint. A mouse follows that draft right in.
• Pipe and wire penetrations. Every place a water line, electrical cable, propane line, or outdoor tap passes through the wall leaves a gap around it. Each one is a small doorway, and there are more of them than you would think.
• The deck. Two spots hide here. The gap behind the ledger board — where the deck attaches to the cottage — can open a route straight into the wall cavity. And the dark, sheltered space under a low deck is exactly the kind of harbour that skunks, groundhogs, and raccoons look for.

A note on vents: the fix is a proper vent cap with a working flap, not a screen stapled over the opening. A screen on a dryer vent traps lint, which is its own hazard, so the cap has to keep venting while still closing over the gap when it is not in use. For the deck, we screen the skirt with a metal mesh — often quarter-inch hardware cloth — so air still moves under it while the opening is covered.

Raccoons rarely fit through a small hole, but they do not have to. They are strong and dexterous, and a raccoon will work a soft, rotten board or a loose panel wider with its paws until it can get in. That is why a spongy spot on a wall or under a deck is worth treating as an entry point, not just a repair.

Look up: the roofline

The roofline is the zone most people never check, and it is the one animals use most once they are climbing. Squirrels and raccoons get up here far more easily than homeowners expect.

• Soffit corners and returns. The soffit is the underside of the roof overhang. Where it wraps a corner, or forms the boxed return at the end of a gable, the panels can pop loose or never quite meet — leaving a gap that opens straight into the attic and all that soft insulation.
• Fascia gaps. The fascia is the board the eavestrough hangs from. When it pulls away or rots at the ends, it leaves a slot behind the gutter that a squirrel can slip through.
• Roof vents. Attic, gable, and box vents move air by design, but the screening behind them fails, tears, or was never there. Screened properly from behind, they keep venting while the opening stays covered.
• The plumbing-stack boot. The rubber boot around the plumbing vent pipe is a weather seal, and sun cracks it over the years. A split boot is more of a water gap than an animal one, but it is worth closing on the same pass.
• The chimney. An open flue is an obvious invitation for raccoons, squirrels, and birds. A proper chimney cap with a spark screen covers it while still letting the smoke out.

The roofline is also up high, which is why this part is often worth handing off rather than doing off a ladder alone. Our techs are trained for this work and wear proper fall-arrest gear, so the soffit corners and vents get checked and sealed without anyone taking a risk on a wet October roof.

Down at the grounds

The last zone is not the building at all — it is what is leaning against it. Two things around the yard quietly make every gap above easier to reach.

• Brush and firewood against the walls. A woodpile or an overgrown shrub stacked tight to the cottage gives animals both cover to work unseen and a step up toward the higher openings. Moving the firewood off the ground and away from the walls takes that ladder away.
• Overhanging limbs. A branch that reaches over the roof is a bridge. Squirrels in particular run a limb straight onto the shingles and go looking for a soffit gap from up top, where nobody thinks to look. Trimming branches back from the roofline closes that route — the kind of work our tree and shrub care service takes care of before winter, when it also lightens the storm and snow load a heavy limb can drop on the roof.

Clearing the grounds does not seal a single gap on its own. What it does is stop making the gaps easy to get to — which is half the battle with the agile climbers we see most in cottage country.

If something is already inside, sealing is not the fix

Everything above is prevention: closing the openings before an animal finds them. It does nothing for an animal that is already in.

In fact, sealing a cottage that already has something living in it only traps it inside, which turns a small problem into a worse one. If you can already hear scratching, gnawing, or movement in a wall or ceiling, that is a removal job, and it needs to be done humanely and legally. That work is handled by our sister company, The Critter Guy, across the same stretch of Grey-Bruce and the Lake Huron shore. Start with them. Once the cottage is clear, that is our cue to come in behind and seal the openings the animal was using, so the same route is closed off.

Removal and sealing are two halves of one fix — one gets the animal out, the other shuts the door behind it.

One slow lap now, or a spring surprise later

A cottage that sits empty from the last warm weekend until spring gives whatever is out there months to move in, undisturbed. The walk we have just done is what gets ahead of that: foundation, walls, roofline, and grounds, gap by gap, before the door is locked for the season.

Our animal prevention service is exactly this pass done for you — we walk the whole outside, note every opening an animal could use, and seal and screen them with metal mesh, proper vent caps, and sealed boots so nothing is left obvious. We do it across the Bruce and the Lake Huron and Georgian Bay shore, from Sauble Beach through Saugeen Shores — Port Elgin and Southampton — and down the coast. You can see everything a full winter checkup covers on our cottage inspections page.

If you would like your cottage walked and sealed before you close up this fall, call us at 519-783-1575. The phone is answered 7 days a week. Tell us where your cottage is and how it sits, and we will give you a clear quote up front.