Rope lights are amazing whenever you want to host a social gathering or just decorate your home in a unique manner. Due to their great versatility, you can do a lot of cool stuff with them as long as you use your imagination. But apart from decorative purposes, do rope lights have any additional use?
You may have heard about using rope lights to keep mice away. While this may sound strange to some, these lights are very efficient as a rodent deterrent as they are bright enough to keep these pesky nocturnal animals away. However, not all rope lights will be effective in this regard and not every time.
Rope lights can be effective at keeping mice and pack rats. For them to work properly, set them up on strobe mode. You can also attach a sensor to the light to turn on when a rodent is nearby which will startle them.
It’s not just mice as you can use LED rope lights to keep away most rodents who come out at night. The beautiful thing about LED lights is that they also won’t cost you a lot of money in the long run due to their lower power consumption.
To know how rope lights can be a useful tool for keeping pesky rodents away, we need to dive a bit deeper into the subject. So, here we go!
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How to Use Rope Lights to Keep Mice Away?
Mice tend to come out at night when no one is around so that they can scrounge for food. However, while doing so, they also end up causing destruction and in some cases spread diseases along the way.
In a single year, mice cause damages to homes, farms, and vehicles. They may look cute but they can bring about devastating consequences. Let’s take a look at how you can protect your home and vehicles from mice infestation.
Protecting your Home
Inside your home, there are many efficient ways to prevent mice from running around. It’s not practical to use rope lights inside your house all night long. However, the garage is a completely different story.
To prevent mice from running amok in your garage at night, you can put bright LED rope lights along the floor. It is important to note that just having LED lights on won’t help that much at keeping mice away, so you need to set the lights to flash mode to keep them away.
Protecting your Vehicles
This solution is for when you go camping and have your vehicle parked outside in the wild. If your vehicle is in the garage, then putting flashing lights in the garage should help.
If it’s parked outside, then you need to place the lights under your vehicle since the entry point will almost always be there. Unless of course, there is a sizable crack or gap anywhere else on the vehicle.
It is important to note that using rope lights cannot guarantee that mice will be kept away. It has worked for a lot of people while it hasn’t for others. These lights will, however, keep pack rats away for certain.
How to Set up Rope Lights When Your Vehicle is Parked Outside?
It’s easy to put lights in the garage as you probably have a power outlet there. But how do you do it if your vehicle is parked outside? Here is how you do this.
- You need to have outdoor safe LED rope lights and basic know-how of how to connect the lights to your battery.
- Connect the lights to your battery and place them under your vehicle. If you don’t want your whole vehicle lit up and stand out a lot, bring the lights through the inside of the engine compartment.
- Make sure that the lights don’t touch any area that could get hot and they are not tangled anywhere.
- Spread the lights on the ground below or fix them to the underside of your vehicle. Again, make sure they are fixed safely. The reason for fixing them under your vehicle as opposed to the ground is that they won’t light up the area that much.
It is important to note that LED rope lights are a lot more effective against pack rats than mice. So, always make sure you have plugged the holes underneath your vehicle to ensure that no rodent gets in.
The lights also have to be waterproof and durable enough to work properly outside. You can also spray some citrus solution near the lights to keep rodents from chewing on it.
Why it’s Important to Keep Mice Away
Mice not only spread diseases but they can also cripple you financially. This is especially the case with vehicles. Mice and rats usually get into vehicles through holes at the bottom of your vehicle. From there, they work their way up looking for food and bite whatever picks their fancy.
RVs and campers are at maximum risk as they are parked for the most part of the year. If you aren’t careful, mice and rats can easily make your RV their home for months without you even knowing about it.
Once inside they will chew through wiring, upholstery, cushions as well as plastic and rubber linings. All these damages in total can cost you upwards of a thousand dollars if not more.
Since they also spread diseases, there is always the risk of getting them when you clean up your vehicle afterward. If you have comprehensive coverage on your car insurance, you might be able to offset some of the cost if the terms allow you to do so.
Otherwise, you are left looking at a hefty sum of money leaving your bank account. What’s worse is that unless you do something about it, the same problem might appear again in the future.
Are Rope Lights Really that Effective Against Mice?
The consensus regarding this is heavily divided with half of the people saying that it won’t work while the other half swear by it. Mice don’t have a problem per se with lights as they walk around in the daytime too. They surely do appear at night even when the lights are on.
However, flashing bright lights have been found to help keep rodents away. There is no guarantee on it working but as per hundreds of thousands of people, they do work.
Lights activated by motion sensors can also help as the lights getting turned on will surely startle the animal. However, it can also be a double-edged sword as the startled mice might run straight into your vehicle to hide.
Conclusion
Due to how divided this topic is, the ultimate decision belongs to you when it comes to using rope lights to keep mice away. They will surely keep pack rats away as they cannot stand light but with mice, it may or may not work.
Unless it is tested thoroughly across various scenarios, no one for sure can cite this method as an efficient way of keeping rodents out or rule it out altogether. So if you have bright LED rope lights lying around, place them in an area where you have the rodent issue and see if it works for you.
Do remember to try both keeping them always lit and having them flash to see if one is more effective than the other. At the same time, take other precautions as well to ensure that you don’t end up with a rodent infestation problem. Good luck!