Bat House Forum

[cobradriver]

IowaNate, I have been seriously considering this whole bat house way of life. I live in an area with all the necessary requirements for a population, including I see them flying around already. So the thing is go with the rocketbox or this 2 chamber design of yours?

And most important, could you please draw up a simple plan on what materials are necessary for your 2 chamber house?

Eitherway, I wanted to let you know that your design and story motivated me to pursue this.

Thnx,

CD

[Joe Spencer]

I'm sure Nate will check in with ya soon! Indeed it sounds like you have a good area for bat house occupancy. Are u in the states or Canada?

[IowaNate]

CobraDriver, I will do my best to draw up a rough plan and material list for you on this style of of house. To start, you will definately need a half sheet of 1/2" plywood, a full sheet of 3/8" plywood, an 8 foot 1x6, and an 8 foot 1x10. These materials will get you started and should cost less than $40.

I checked my houses today after the past week's unusually low temperatures. We had daytime highs of upper 60s and low 70's. The two wrap-around houses had about equal numbers of about 200-300 bats by best estimate, but the house mounted on the building exploded with bats! There was easily 150 bats using the house and 40 to 50 bats using the space I left behind the house.

My theory is that the colder temperatures made the bats seek out a more temperature stable roost. Hence the building it is mounted on greatly buffered the daytime and nighttime temps. All of the bats I saw were little browns and their young are almost ready to fly by the looks of it.

[cobradriver]

Thank you vm Nate...now heres a predicament. I have a building to put it on, my shop/garage, but it's the sun hits it east west and the south side is about 20-30 feet away from trees. So what to do in this situation? Placing the bathouse SW will be kind of hard to do, and the treeline is there, from what I have read, that is a negative factor.

Thanx for any and all help and suggestions

Vladimir

[IowaNate]

I would try to place it so it gets as much morning sun as possible. The treeline being 20-30 feet away isn't too close by any means, and I wouldn't be afraid to put it facing the treeline if thats the spot where the most morning sun is.
The main reason for keeping a bat house away from obstacles such as tree branches, is to give bats enough room for flight when approaching and especially when leaving the house since bats tend to swoop down and out of a house requiring good flight space. With that said, one of my bat houses is hung on my home facing South and my nieghbor's home is only 11 feet away from the face of the bat house. This bat house is currently occupied.

[Canute]

Really like this design! I plan on building one very similar over the winter to have up by early next spring.

[Markcuda]

How about some up dates?