The Situation

Almost Everything Standing Here Is New or Repaired

Hurricane Ian made landfall as a Category 4 on 28 September 2022 and reshaped the built environment across Lee County. Much of what stands today on Estero Island, Sanibel and Captiva is rebuilt, substantially repaired, or newly elevated to current flood requirements.

That produces a rodent situation most homeowners do not expect, because the instinct is that a new house should be tighter than an old one. In practice the opposite is frequently true, and it is not because anyone did shoddy work. It is structural.

The List

Five Openings That Routinely Get Missed on a Rebuild

1. Soffit fitted to a structure that is still settling

Soffit panels sit in a channel at the wall and a channel at the fascia. Fitted to a frame that has not finished settling, a panel that seated perfectly at handover has a gap eighteen months later. On a run of houses built by the same crew in the same window, the same gap appears across all of them.

2. Foam sealed mechanical penetrations

The AC line set, condensate line, plumbing stub outs, dryer vent and electrical service entry are each made by a different trade, and each is sealed by whoever made the hole with whatever was on the truck. That is almost always expanding foam. Rodents remove foam within days. Nobody coordinates a final envelope check because it is not anybody’s scope.

3. Temporary construction openings never closed

Access holes, temporary service penetrations and scaffold tie points are somebody’s last task on a job that has already moved on. A proportion simply do not get closed.

4. The new elevated underside

This is the one specific to post Ian rebuilding. Homes lifted to current flood requirements now have a dry, sheltered, temperature stable space directly under the floor that did not exist before. It works as harborage in its own right and as a staging area to reach utility penetrations and the floor assembly from below. Most Florida exclusion assumes slab on grade and skips it entirely.

5. New tile runs with open ends

A new roof has the same open eave, hip and ridge voids as an old one. Whether the closures were fitted along the full length is a question worth asking, because on a fast rebuild schedule it is a detail that gets rushed.

Who Pays

Some of This Is Arguably Builder Warranty

This is the part most homeowners never raise, and it is worth raising.

Incomplete penetration sealing and unclosed temporary construction openings are arguably construction defects rather than homeowner maintenance. They are not wear and tear and they are not something you caused. Whether your warranty covers them depends on your contract and how long ago the work completed, but you cannot have that conversation without evidence.

So the sequence matters: get a photographed survey first, then decide who should be paying. A survey that produces an entry point count and a photo file turns “I think they missed something” into a documented claim. Even where the warranty has expired or the builder is unresponsive, you still end up knowing exactly what needs closing rather than guessing.

Salt

And on the Islands, Ask About the Mesh

Sanibel, Captiva and Estero Island get salt from two directions. Standard galvanised mesh has raw cut edges wherever it has been trimmed to fit, and those edges corrode considerably faster here than an inland installer expects. A seal fitted to mainland practice can begin failing within a few years while looking entirely sound from the ground.

Ask specifically: will the cut edges be sealed, or are you using stainless or copper? It is a modest premium and on a barrier island it is the difference between work that lasts and work you pay for twice.

Areas Covered in This Post

Where This Applies

• Rodent Control Fort Myers Beach
• Rodent Control Sanibel
• Rodent Control Captiva
• New Construction Rodent Proofing
• Crawl Space & Underside Proofing

More from the Southwest Florida blog, or see the Southwest Florida service area page.