Paying for any house project (like landscaping, building a deck, installing new flooring, and plenty more) usually boils down to two factors: material and labor. It’s basically impossible to avoid paying for material, but DIY-inclined individuals may try to save some money by cutting out labor costs and completing a project themselves.

In a lot of cases, this is a clever way to hone your trade skills and keep your bank account intact. So, if you’re interested in preventative pest control solutions, the question naturally follows: “Should I try to install wildlife exclusion products on my own?”

It’s a fair question. After all, if someone can, say, install a new door on their house, why shouldn’t they try to put in their own pest control products?

At HY-C, we make our own line of wildlife exclusion caps, screens, and guards. We also work directly with wildlife control experts around the country to facilitate installation on homes everywhere, and the consensus is clear: the installation of wildlife exclusion devices is better left to wildlife control professionals rather than homeowners.

That statement may seem overly cautious to some readers. But in this guide, we’ll outline three reasons why it’s best not to install your own wildlife exclusion devices. By the time you’re finished, you’ll understand the nuances and expertise required to ensure the proper installation of these devices, and it will be clear why this kind of work is better left to the professionals.

Why You Shouldn’t Install Wildlife Exclusion Products on Your Own

Reason #1: Roofs Are Dangerous

Quite a few wildlife control products (specifically chimney caps and roof vent guards) are installed on a home’s roof. And even if you’re comfortable up on your roof, there are plenty of reasons to avoid climbing that ladder and installing these caps and guards yourself.

First of all, roofs are dangerous. It should go without saying that a fall from a roof can lead to serious injury or even death. That risk is great enough on a single-story home; if you have a two- or three-story house, the probability of significantly harming yourself in a fall increases exponentially.

Roofs are also made with different slopes. Even a flat roof is dangerous enough (especially if you’re close to the edge), but some roofs may feature a slope of 45° or greater. The steeper your roof, the greater the chances of an accident.

Roofers, chimney sweeps, and wildlife control specialists utilize safety equipment to mitigate the risk of falling from a roof while doing their jobs. Between roofing-specific footwear, ladders, harnesses, and ropes, professionals have the gear they need to operate safely on a rooftop.

Even if you own that kind of gear yourself, professionals who work on roofs receive training on the proper use of the equipment and spend years practicing and perfecting their craft. At the end of the day, it’s best to stay off your roof and simply leave the installation of rooftop wildlife exclusion devices to the pros.

Reason #2: Wildlife Laws Vary Widely

Wildlife exclusion devices aren’t designed to capture animals; they’re designed to keep animals out of your house. What can happen if you install your own wildlife exclusion device, though, is that you may miss the signs of an animal’s presence in your home and accidentally seal them in. It’s at this point that you run into problems with your local, state, and even national wildlife control laws.

These laws are far too complex to delve into deeply here — they vary from state to state, or even city to city. But we can give you a few quick highlights of common wildlife legal problems courtesy of our wildlife control experts:

• You’re generally not allowed to keep the animals you catch
• In many cases, you can’t release captured animals on public land
• Some states don’t allow captured animals to cross county lines
• Some states don’t allow you even to capture animals at all (you can only exclude them)
• Many states require the euthanasia of a captured animal

For these reasons, it’s important to allow a trained wildlife control operator to inspect your house for animals before installing exclusion devices. From there, that same expert (or another expert they’ve recommended) should install the exclusion equipment. Proper training and a keen understanding of local wildlife laws are prerequisites that only a wildlife control expert can offer.

Reason #3: Understanding Animal Behavior Requires Training

One of the most important aspects of installing wildlife exclusion products is knowing how to install the right device at the right time for the right critter. Installing a screen with ⅝” mesh (instead of ⅜” mesh) on a foundation vent could result in mice or birds invading. Forgetting to attach some bug screen to a ⅜” mesh soffit vent could wind up allowing wasps and stink bugs into your attic.

Animals are crafty and resourceful. Once they’ve found a place to live and store food, they don’t want to give up on that spot — even if it’s right inside your chimney. Installing wildlife exclusion devices isn’t just about using the right hardware and the right drill bit; it’s about knowing critters’ habits and how to adapt to them.

Wildlife control professionals spend years learning about the animals they control, and the good ones become experts in those animals, acutely aware of what they like, how they act, and how to keep them out of peoples’ houses. For these reasons (and more), they’re best qualified to install exclusion products on your home.

How Can You Find Someone to Install Wildlife Exclusion Products?

You may have come to this article with some skepticism, but hopefully by now it’s clear why the installation of wildlife exclusion devices is better left to the professionals. Between the dangers of being on your roof without proper training and equipment, not understanding your local wildlife laws, and having little to no experience with animals’ behavior, there are plenty of reasons to defer to a wildlife control operator.

But where can you find one?

If you’re interested in installing HY-GUARD EXCLUSION’S animal exclusion screens, guards, caps, we’d be more than happy to point you in the direction of an operator in your area who can help. We’ve built up a great network of professionals who install our products (or products like them) all the time. Get in touch with our customer service team — they’ll be happy to assist you.

Proper ventilation is essential for any home. Whether it’s air being drawn in through your soffits, into the attic, and out through the roof vents or outlets for appliances like a dryer or fireplace, keeping fresh, clean air is important for the health of the home and the homeowners alike.

Unfortunately, though, ventilation comes with tradeoffs. Ventilation means holes in your home, and holes in your home mean any number of unwelcome guests could creep through. From small or medium-sized animals to crawling, flying, and stinging insects, the last thing homeowners want is for outside wildlife to get inside the house.

The solution to keeping wildlife out comes in the form of exclusion products. And while there are plenty of great brands on the market, at HY-C, we manufacture HY-GUARD EXCLUSION: a line-up of wildlife control products engineered to keep critters out of your home while still allowing that all-important air circulation to take place.

But what kinds of products are in the line? How do they work? And what are they made of? In this guide, we’ll answer those questions (and more) to help familiarize you with what wildlife control products are and what they do. By the time you’re done, you’ll know exactly what kind of pests to keep out and how you can stop them from getting into your home.

What Kind of Wildlife Control Products Does HY-GUARD EXCLUSION Make?

HY-GUARD EXCLUSION products have multiple purposes and keep out all kinds of critters, but each product falls into one of three distinct categories:

1. Exclusion caps
2. Exclusion screens
3. Exclusion guards

Exclusion Caps

Exclusion caps are made exclusively to sit atop chimneys. There are two varieties of exclusion caps: chimney caps, and chimney guards. Chimney caps feature both a solid, metal top that keeps snow and rain out of your fireplace and mesh sides that still allow smoke and gasses to vent out as logs burn.

Exclusion guards are basically the same, but instead of a solid, metal top, they feature a mesh top (and mesh sides). These guards are typically used in areas with low precipitation that require spark arresting, a process in which the tight mesh “catches” sparks to prevent them from floating away into dry vegetation, potentially causing wildfires.

Both chimney caps and chimney guards come with mesh patterns that are tight enough to keep out local animals (and, if the mesh is tight enough, bees and wasps). These caps are often bolted on, preventing animals from ripping them off and making a home in your chimney.

Exclusion Screens

Exclusion screens are pretty straightforward: they come as a flat “sheet” with a solid, metal frame and a diamond mesh body. These screens go anywhere on your home that have a sizable opening — typically on a soffit or over an opening in the house’s foundation.

Like exclusion caps, exclusion screens are bolted into place, so curious animals won’t be able to rip them off and get inside. Depending on the tightness of the mesh, these screens can keep out decently sized insects, too.

Exclusion Guards

Finally, HY-GUARD EXCLUSION’s lineup also features a few different exclusion guards. These guards exist to cover vents from products that need to put out some kind of exhaust — products like dryers, fireplaces, or wood burning furnaces or stoves.

Exclusion guards are also bolted onto the house. They may be made from either plastic or metal. While metal is obviously stronger, even plastic guards are capable of withstanding the prying claws of a critter. A tight-meshed guards can keep out small critters or large insects.

Where on Your House do HY-GUARD EXCLUSION Products Go?

HY-GUARD EXCLUSION products quite literally cover everything from a home’s roof to its foundation. Whether the opening in the home exists for ventilation purposes or to service the exhaust needs of an appliance, there’s a cap, screen, or guard to cover it.

Chimneys

Starting at the highest point on the home, exclusion caps and guards are bolted onto chimney flues to keep animals out. While there are technically no chimney caps or guards under the HY-GUARD EXCLUSION name, other HY-C brands (like Shelter and Draft King) make chimney products engineered for wildlife control.

Roof Vents

Staying near the top of the house, HY-GUARD EXCLUSION manufactures an entire line of roof vent guards. The vents themselves allow air to circulate through a home’s attic while the guard keeps birds or dexterous mammals from getting into the attic and building their nests.

These roof vent guards are designed with swooping angles to look architecturally pleasing. They also come with pre-cut holes to accommodate screws that go directly into the roof’s shingles so the vent guard stays securely in place.

Soffits

Plenty of critters (especially raccoons) love to make their homes in soffits. Many soffits come with a layer of hardware cloth built in, but most animals have no trouble ripping off this flimsy mesh and climbing through to set up camp. HY-GUARD EXCLUSION’s soffit vent covers are made from galvanized steel, which is significantly harder for animals to gnaw or claw through.

Dryer Vents

The majority of vents that appear on the side of the house are dryer vents, and animals can get into them quite easily. HY-GUARD EXCLUSION’s dryer vent covers come either with diamond mesh or code-compliant, vertical bars to keep local animals out of your dryer vent hose.

Foundations

It’s important for an attic to breathe, and it’s important for a basement to breathe, too. To prevent stale air from gathering at the base of a home, some houses come equipped with foundation vents to promote circulation.

These areas are very vulnerable to bugs and critters, and HY-GUARD EXCLUSION’s foundation vent guards keep these intrusions out while still allowing airflow into the basement.

What Kinds of Wildlife do HY-GUARD EXCLUSION Products Exclude?

HY-GUARD EXCLUSION’s caps, screens, and guards are designed to keep out a large range of animals and insects based on the biodiversity of your local environment. The vast majority of the products are made with stainless steel mesh, and the size of each product’s mesh helps to determine what kind of animals or insects it will exclude from your home.

⅝” Mesh

The widest HY-GUARD EXCLUSION mesh option, ⅝” mesh will keep out larger intrusive animals. Some of the most commonly excluded are:

• Raccoons
• Opossums
• Squirrels
• Skunks
• Beavers
• Birds

It should be noted that bats and mice are not on this list. While ⅝” diamond mesh should keep mice and bats out of your house in theory, in practice, animals are sometimes determined to squeeze through tight spaces. At the end of the day, it is theoretically possible for a bat or a mouse to get through ⅝” diamond mesh.

⅜” Mesh

The next-tightest mesh option, ⅜” mesh represents the threshold at which mice and bats can no longer get in (but insects still can). This mesh size is commonly designed to keep out:

• Mice
• Bats
• Raccoons
• Opossums
• Squirrels
• Skunks
• Beavers
• Birds

¼” Mesh

Finally, at just 0.25” in length, this mesh size is engineered to exclude all the critters listed above (and other similarly sized animals) plus medium to large-sized insects. Some of the most common insects kept out by ¼” mesh include:

• Bees
• Wasps
• Yellow jackets
• Stink bugs

Keep in mind that while ¼” mesh does keep out some bigger invasive insects, smaller ones (like ants) can still make their way through the cracks.

Are HY-GUARD EXCLUSION Products Right for You?

Before now, you may not have even known about some of the spaces on your home that were vulnerable to insects and animals. After reading this, you may feel compelled to take a peek at your dryer vent, or to glance up at your soffit to see if it has any vents.

Depending on what you find, you may decide you want some exclusion screens or guards. After all, wildlife control products are designed to be preventative, keeping a bat colony out of your attic or a stink bug infestation out of your basement before it can even begin.

If you decide you want to keep animals and insects out of your house with wildlife control products, your next step should be to contact a wildlife control professional — they’re qualified and licensed to install products like HY-GUARD EXCLUSION.

Keep the ventilation spots we mentioned in mind — spaces like chimney openings, roof vents, soffit openings, dryer vents, and foundation vents. Ask a professional which of these are present on your home, and ask them to find the appropriate screens and guards to cover up these vulnerabilities.

After the installation is complete, you’ll be left with peace of mind and a clean, well-ventilated home that’s set up to minimize pest invasion and maximize comfort.