Bat House Forum

[Joe Spencer]

Hi all! I just put up this wooden rocket bat house with heat core in my back yard today.  I call it the megarocket to differentiate it from other and original rocket style bat houses which are single chambered. Fall has arrived here in Massachusetts which is a great time to be ready for spring occupancy. Note the Square Base made from rough thick pine with a swivel post for mount-demount. Square Base enables bat house to be easily relocated to a new location with no need to dig post holes:

Photo ONE below has piece one of three consists of the hollow heat core and one chamber which surrounds it and is attached to it.




Photo TWO below shows the CORE COVER which when essentially slipped over the core, creates another chamber. Next the removable HEAT CORE which is thin wood filled with gravel and weighs 10 lbs. It nearly doubles the thermal mass in bat house. It is placed in the top of the hollow inner core before CORE COVER is placed. You could easily make HEAT CORE entirely out of concrete or sand within a burlap bag or similar increasing the weight and thermal mass. Finally the TOP for protection from the elements:




Photo THREE showing the final installation:




THIS BAT HOUSE is 25ft. from the nearest tree and branches and has one 3/4" chamber and ONE 7/8" chamber. It also (not shown) has a small slit inside the core chamber half way up allowing bats to switch chambers internally without exposure. Additionally as is the case with properly designed rocket bat houses, the bats can move 360 degrees around and up and down the entire length to suit their temperature needs. I specifically am testing an exposed outward landing pad design instead of an inward so as to discourage paper wasp building at the bottom of chambers.

[Joe Spencer]

Update! the rocket bat house is now being used as a diurnal roost by 1-2 bats.  The accumulated guano was the indicator however, I waited until an 8:30 pm emergence to confirm occupancy as a diurnal roost as apposed to it being used as an evening digestive roost which bats often do as well.  Certainly not a large tally of bats but good news indeed. The bat(s) have favored this bat house over the two nursery houses located a few feet away mounted on my home.  :thumbsup1:

[Rick and Karen]

Hi Joe,

Just thought I would let you know, all our bat houses are being used! Rick kept the two on the right side of the house, one on the left, and the bat rocket. I don't know where all the other bats have come from (like we didn't have alot before) but all the houses are quit full. I couldn't count them all if I tried. It's bat heaven.

Karen :calmhappy:

[LarryH]

That is really good to hear!   A similar thing happened with my 2 houses.  After I put them up early this spring, they were empty for quite a while.  Then, I noticed there were 2 bats in one of the houses, and none in the other.  It stayed that way for several weeks.  Then I noticed there were about a dozen bats in the same house, and 4 or 5 bats in the other house, that had been unused.

Suddenly, in late June both houses were very busy -- too many bats to count.  If I went out in the late evening, after the bats had emerged for the night, I could see pups hanging close to the bottom of the first house, apparently waiting for the mother to return with food.   Now, nearly a month later, the population has again increased to where the bats look like a swarm when they come out in the evening.   But, for several days when our temperatures were in the low 100's, I didn't see much activity around the bat houses in the evening -- I wonder if they moved out of the houses to a cooler place during that hot weather?  As soon as our temperatures returned to the 80's and low 90's, they were back in the houses.

This morning when I went out the garage (which is really a metal pole barn with a concrete floor, and plenty of opening for small critters), I noticed droppings from big brown bats on the floor behind the Jeep.  I looked up trusses to see if I could find any roosting, but did not see any.  The droppings were full of insect wings and shells, in particular a lot of June Bug wings.  I wonder if they were just resting in the garage before continuing the hunt for bugs?   They are seen nightly around the mercury vapor light on the outside of the garage catching June Bugs and moths.  So, they may have just gone inside to rest before hunting again.


 

[Rick and Karen]

Hi Larry,

We have had baby brown bats for over 11 years now. When we bought our house, the bats had gotten into the walls. Joe helped us out with bat houses and advice. Last years our 3 bat houses were over full, the bats got back into one of the walls again. We got a bat rocket to try it out and were going to take the bat houses off the house. We ended up leaving the 3 bat houses up to see how the rocket would do. All 3 houses are almost full, plus the bat rocket is almost full. For some reason the baby brown bats love my house. We're talking hundreds of bats. You should see them when they all come back home in the early morning, what a sight!! My flower gardens are also doing great!

Karen:calmhappy:  

[Joe Spencer]

Hi Joe,

Just thought I would let you know, all our bat houses are being used! Rick kept the two on the right side of the house, one on the left, and the bat rocket. I don't know where all the other bats have come from (like we didn't have alot before) but all the houses are quit full. I couldn't count them all if I tried. It's bat heaven.

Karen :calmhappy:

[font=verdana]Awesome to hear from you Karen! Hope all is well. Karen do you still have any bats in your walls?  If you do have bats in the walls then I would be happy to further assist with exclusion info and help. If not it is because the roosting demand has been temporarily satisfied.  The year round stream next to your property is one of the main reasons the little browns like your setup. Have you been putting all that guano in your flower garden? Karen a few years ago Rick and I went exploring nearby searching on the wherabouts of potential hibernacula (cave - mine ) near your home and someone that lived on a nearby semi-mountain seemed convinced of its existence.  We can't conclude that if it does exist that it is also suitable hibernacula for the bats that summer with you but there is a chance of it.  Do you or Rick remember the name of the mountain or potential cave?  With a name I'll contact the local Speleological Society and see if there is any data on it.[/font]

[font=verdana]The foam rocket bat house that Karen now has occupied is below. [/font]

[Rick and Karen]

Hi Joe,

I have my flower gardens under the bat houses. All the guano falls into them and they grow like crazy. The mountain your asking about is Tully Mountain, down the street from my house. No bats in the walls that we know about. Last year, they got down beside the chimney. They would climb down in the morning and back up in the evening and jump off the roof. It was quit a sight. We sealed up around the chimney good, early spring.This year they actually climb up under the sceening on the side of the house to get in the eves. I'm hoping when we put on the new roof on that we sealed up the sides good enough so they can't get into the walls. These little brown bats seem to be adapting to their enviroment, too well. They actually can jump and can scoot up the outside of the house under the sceening. I would never have believed it, if I hadn't seen it myself! It actually a realy neat scene to watch though. I just hope they don't get back in the walls!! Last time we saved most of the bats in the wall. We scooped them out with a net and let them climb into the bat house. Out of all the bats that we scooped out, only one died. There were adults and young bats. One mother with its baby attached. pretty neat!!  

Karen :calmhappy:

[Joe Spencer]

Thanks Karen!  When I come up I'll take some updated pics.  Maybe I'll have some info on Tully Mountain!

[LarryH]

Is there a link to the building plans for this rocket house?  It has probably been posted before, but I didn't see it.

Larry

[Joe Spencer]

Larry I don't have the exact dimensions of this prototype only 1 of two in existence that I built, but the photos give an idea.  The wood innermost wood core which slips over post is 3ft long with the two foam box partitions being 2ft and 2 1/2 ft respectively.  I'm assuming you mean Karen's lightweight foam megarocket seen above and here:


This link below is gone I am hoping to get it back soon.

http://batnic.org/bhfshare/foamrocket/index.html

[Terry Lobdell]

Hi Joe,

I like your landing pad design on the Mega Rocket. I've also been reading Kent Borcherding's advice on landing designs for bat houses. 

I had an interesting observation this summer on a bat house which was one of the first I built and does not have the best landing pad. I have observed bats entering this house several times during early daylight around 6am and they flew right up in without using the landing pad. The crevices are one inch in thickness with 5/8" plywood baffles covered with fiberglass window screen. The bats apparently fly right up and grab the baffles and pull themselves in. These baffles are not offset. This bat house is mounted on the gable end of a 2nd story screened in porch. Several times this summer I have slept out in this porch and observed my big browns trying to re-enter in the middle of the night. What is interesting is they repeatedly missed as they tried to enter the bat house. I would say about 75% of the time they would fly up, hit and fall down. I'm guessing that their difficulty entering the bat house in the dark would be attributed to the darkness and my faulty entry design.

I plan on changing the baffles on this house so that they are offset at least a little bit for the next year. I also want to try the 2 inch baffle offsets Kent B. recomends on new bat houses I build.

I was wondering what your preferences were on bat house landing pads?

Thanks,

Terry L. 

[Joe Spencer]

Terry if you haven't already seen it, on the link below scroll down to movie which has a bat returning with "baby on back?" and it clearly utilizes the landing pad instead of gripping and landing on the baffle first.  Great info you provided from your observances.  I have been using and experimenting with bat houses which do and don't have offsets.  The offsets when they are 2" or more basically turn into a landing pad themselves.  Additionally, I have noticed that offset baffles help a little bit in discouraging paper wasps from building nests on the bottom of the baffles/dividers.  I like to use 4"+ landing pads but if you stagger/shorten each additional divider by 2" it may help with the bat being able to more readily get in a large multi chamber nursery house. MOVIE: http://www.batnic.org/forum/forum5/195.html     Thanks for the info.  :calmhappy:

I saw my bats in this bat house which had the baffles staggered  2" return numerous times to the bat house during late night feedings and land successfully on the first attempt I believe:  http://www.batnic.org/bigimages/batsinhouse100.html

[Joe Spencer]

I have some great news on the megarocket above.  I managed to attract both big browns and little browns to the bat house.  I'll post some photos soon of the guano.  Some day I hope to have a batcam as well to monitor.    

[Phil Magsig]

I don't exactly know how this works, but here I go..

 

Last weekend I worked with a friend on a farm house replacing 3 windows in the upstairs. He had said that he had a couple of bats in that part of the house, but I don't even think he knew what we would find. As we took off some of the inside paneling to make room from the new windows we found up to a 5 gallon bucket of bat dung. As we used the wet vac to suck it up, there were about 6-7 bats that stuck their little bodies out. I sucked 4 up in the wet vac  I even had one bounce off my back (as I was screaming and running away)

As the windows are all in  now, I started researching "appropriate human behavior towards bats..."  I had no idea...sicknesses from Bat dung, don't kill bats, bat houses.  I don't mean to make anybody upset, but I didn't know.  That being said, I'm off to try my hand at makeing a couple of bat houses for my friend's house.  Come to find out (after we were done) my friend said he counted 120 lift off from a hole in his house.

 

Any suggestions?

 

Phil

[Joe Spencer]

Phil first welcome and secondly if you browse this forum and the links below you will hopefully find some information to help you.  I recommend you get the Bat House Builder's Handbook from BCI or or http://www.amazon.com  It is a quick and easy read yet chock full of great information on our nocturnal friends and fantastic information on proven designs and tips which work.   Additionally, where is the farm house in question? What state or Country etc. which may help a member better assist you. Lastly don't hesitate to post additional questions for we're here to help you to help bats.

Joe

http://www.batcon.org

http://www.batnic.org/bat-help.htm