How to Stop Chipmunks from Ruining Your Foundation?

Those cute chipmunks are ruining the foundation of your house.

Want to stop chipmunks from ruining the foundation of your house?  Can you practically hear them breeding under your house?

Darling as they are, those chipmunks are coming out of the holes and tunnels they have been using to weaken your foundation, right up through the ever-widening cracks they’re making in your patio, where they will scamper around causing your dog to bark maniacally as he tries to alert you to impending danger:

Your house is beginning to sink because you need to stop those chipmunks from ruining your foundation!

Crazy Auntie is determined to help you. She is going to march over to your house, armed with a bucket, a board, some peanut butter, and a bunch of sunflower seeds.

Have-a-heart traps, cementing chipmunk holes shut, and other methods.

You can rule out have-a-heart traps, where you give the chipmunks a free ride to a nicer neighborhood near the woods, so their relatives (and distant cousins like rats) can move in beneath your foundation, grateful for the entire city of complex tunnels already dug.

Crazy Auntie told you that fox urine wouldn’t keep the pests away. Pumping exhaust fumes down the holes won’t work either, and neither will shutting up the chipmunk holes with rocks and mortar or stuffing them with mothballs.

They’ll just saunter out through a different tunnel., or dig a new hole to tunnel in.

Grab the bucket and hose to get rid of chipmunks.

So here’s Crazy Auntie who enlists Junior and heads out to the patio with a five-gallon bucket. Junior takes the hose and fills it half full of water. (Low enough so chipmunks can’t climb out.)

Then Auntie pours in sunflower seeds to float on top and completely cover up the water. Next, a water slide! It’s a 3″ by 1″ board, about 3 feet long, which is used as a ramp from the stone wall. It can lean against the bucket too. She even smears some peanut butter at both ends of the board.

The plan is for the cheeky chippies, attracted by the yummy smells, to run down or climb up the ramp, and fall in. Gluggity glug. Auntie even suggests using a second or third bucket. But keep the little ones inside until you empty the buckets.

Junior wants to stand by the bucket and watch the chipmunk diving event but Auntie convinces him that the chipmunks won’t go swimming while he plays lifeguard. Just as they go back into the house, they hear a teensy splash. Auntie will go out in a bit to dispose of the circus and replenish seeds and peanut butter.

Stop chipmunks from destroying your property.

Chipmunks are extremely destructive. The complexity of the tunnel system they construct underground is inviting other rodents and insects (including termites) to use, who may carry disease with them.

In most cases, the chipmunk’s main tunnel is 20 to 30 feet in length, but complex burrow systems normally include a nesting chamber, one or two food storage chambers, various side pockets connected to the main tunnel, and separate escape tunnels.”(See source below.)

Chipmunks undermine sidewalks, too, and even get behind the siding and into the walls. They destroy vegetable and flower gardens, chew through wiring, and get into heat ducts.

Bucket method is the best way to get rid of chipmunks, but not around little kids

Most methods of control and extermination are ineffective, dangerous to pets and people, or result in a foul odor. The bucket method is effective, but should not be used where children play.

If chipmunks are numerous or persistent, consult a professional pest control operator USDA-APHIS-ADC biologist.

As Crazy Auntie knows “Chipmunks are cute until they rip out your house insulation, chew your electric wiring, destroy the insides of your car, build nests in your air filter, eat all your strawberries and snow peas, and more!” (From the Garden Web Forum.)