noise in walls/attic - mice?

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messyleo

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hi guys just moved into an old end of etrrace house and there is lots of banging/rattling/sounds of moving coming from the end of terrace external wall and it also sounds like someone is actually walking around above the ceilings/in the attic! could it be mice? i thought this but it really is very loud - almost like a cat jumping round on pipes and the noise is often as if someone is rattling a key in a door. i was pretty terrified last night staying in the house on my own and haven't got a clue what it could be. there is no evidence of mice holes (or are they only in cartoons? ;)) or droppings or anything. any suggestions? i'm honestly thinking it might even be ghosts and i would usually think that kind of stuff is rubbish!
 
oh god... but there doesn't seem to actually be acces to the attic at all which might be a problem in actually finding out what the problem is! the second floor goes quite high up into the roof i.e. the ceilings of the rooms slant quite a bit. it could be abird alright, though i don't hear any bird-type chirping! it really is so loud that i can hear it over the tv
 
Mice are much louder than you'd expect them to be. They can sometimes sound like heavy rain falling on the ceiling.
 
A relative of ours had a very old terraced house years ago which had a shared attic with the other houses in the terrace!
 
I have noises too and I definitely don't have mice. I definitely think it's birds making scratching sounds on the tiles. You would also have the sound of creaking/settling cracks from the joists in the attic and if you have PVC windows they creak also due to heat I think. Maybe I'm only fooling myself but it's what gives me a good nights sleep anyway!
 
I moved into an old house about a year ago now with similar sloping ceils to yours. I had access through a cupboard which i think the previous owners had cut and then just screwed on a board. There was still actually alot of attic space. If you haven't got access then it would be a good idea to make some. i had terrible noise from birds and throught the slates were going to come off the roof on several occassions. i live alone also and its a horrible sensation. I put insulation in the attic (badly needed) and i don't notice the sounds at all now. I also noticed that the attic wall separating my house from one of my neighbour did not meet at the bottom corners and its suprising how sound can carry from next door because of this. I put in central heating which caused the wooden ceilings to expand and contract causing noises and alot of dust at first. Alot of the noise is usually something normal its just a bit frightening when you don't know what it is. First thing i would do however is check out the attic.
 
When the heating goes off in our house there is always banging, creaking rattling noises for a while from the pipes and probably the wood in the ceiling etc, contracting as its cooling down. I wouldn't have known what it was only that the people we bought the house from had mentioned it to us. The house is about 40 years old, semi d. Have you noticed that the noise only happens at particular times, e.g just after your heating goes off?
 
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