Bat House Forum

[Markcuda]

I'm in the market for a new bat house.
I have two that are made by Looker.
Very well made, one is a 3 chamber and the other is a 5 chamber.
The 5 chamber was about 80 bucks.
What other houses are there for under 100 bucks?
I have done allot of bat house research and the Looker is hard to beat for the money.
Here is a link to the two that I have, the bottom 2 are the ones I have.
http://www.lookerinc.com/category.php?c ... Bat_Houses

[flyin-lowe]

I remember how I felt when martins started living in the martin house I built. I will probably feel the same when bats start living in the bat house I built. My vote is to build your own. Plus you can save some bucks, which is never a bad thing.

[Markcuda]

I just don't know/think I have it in me to build my own
I did order the 4x4x20 pressure treated to day.

[William Bagwell]

Aw come on, I built a mold and 'customized' (read boogered up) a perfectly good jointer just to make a few grooves so you should be able to build one bat house.

William

[Markcuda]

William, you got any pictures of your house completed?
Are you selling these things?
Are they ready?
How much will they cost?

[William Bagwell]

William, you got any pictures of your house completed?
Are you selling these things?
Are they ready?
How much will they cost?

Yes, site is linked to in my profile and please visit the test page at,
http://alt-config.net/testing/mosquitoe_myths_test.html Not only one of
the newer pages it also has a toolbar which will eventually be used on
almost every page and I would appreciate some feed back.

Certainly hope to sell these things! Eventully...

Only the shells are ready for mas production at the moment. So far every
completed house has went quickly, however I'm not at point of comfortably
offering them at the prices I hope to eventually sell them at.

Really need to get Joe's permission to answer this last one. Will say that I do plan to eventually have at least one version (model? Baffle pack?) that fully assembled retails under $100. Until I get some more machinery set up will never get costs down to that price point.

The good news is that I have been working a side job the past few weekends that will pay for a thickness planer and a couple more routers.

William

[Markcuda]

I was on your site, navigated around a bit.
How much for a 5 chamber ready to ship house?

[William Bagwell]

Which one caught your eye? The five chamber with the plywood outer baffles or the experimental 'rough sandy wall' with no outer baffles? Both of those used recycled pallets for the inner baffles which is the only source of thin, yet reasonably consistent thickness, rough sawn lumber I have found so far.

The sandy wall experiment was the only one so far that was quick and simple to put together. Wish I had ran more than one since the outer one sided baffles are a bit of a pain with these first few prototypes. Will remedy this on the next run though. Going to get rid of most of the center band that is the cause of most of the problems plus I plan to run more with the rough sand that will not need the outer baffles.

The house with the poplar baffles is closest to a finished product. At least what I envision as a finished product... Will be a few weeks before I get my surface planer so I can run poplar with five chambers. BTW pre-finished poplar at the 'big box' building supplies is actually higher than western cedar.

Hoping this next weekend to finish an R&D bat box I started over a month ago before I got side tracked. It will be at least six chambers, possibly seven, and all plastic. No wood at all!

William

[Markcuda]

Which one caught your eye?

The one that is resting/sitting on aluminum.

[William Bagwell]

Ah, the four chamber poplar. Might be a few weeks before I can do a five chamber version.

Did you get my email via the forum?

William

[Markcuda]

Yes, I got yours, did you get mine?

[William Bagwell]

No I have not. Have already checked one spam folder, need to go check the other.