Bat House Forum

[Joe Spencer]

For those who have missed it please check out William Bagwell's rotational molding bat houses in the link BELOW. I pondered this years ago right when my children were born and never got around to the mold. I'm so glad to see it come to fruition by William. What I like about this is it has always been my opinion to enable bat house enthusiasts to easily mount bat houses on buildings or poles safely at heights easy enough for erection and maintenance. I'm a proponent of erecting/raising bat houses in two or more pieces to save weight during the latter process. Also the ease of maintenance for excessive wasp nests etc. should they occur. Building the outside mold shell only, allows you to experiment with changes/modifications/maintenance to the separate inner roosting chamber which you merely slide in and attach after raising the mold/or wooden exterior/shell portion of the bat house. Of course I'm referring to heavier nursery style or large rocket style bat house designs. Previously bat houses which have been made entirely of plastic both outer and inner cores have often gotten too hot with bats abandoning them in heat extremes unless painted with the correct color or placed just right for the area. With William's design there's no exterior maintenance, little painting required unless the latter is a mod for temperature extremes. Different colors can be made for different areas. The design also allows for experimentation. Kent Borcherding noted that airflow was important for bats as well and Tony Koch's open sided nursery bat houses suspended from the roof of a barn were extremely successful. Very nice work on your mold/design William. Simply fantastic. William, what is the weight of the mold shell of your completed shells without the added sand and what is the minimum weight you believe you can make them without compromising them?

http://mysecondbathouse.com/

[William Bagwell]

Wow, I had no idea you had contemplated a roto-molded house. All of the proto types were run at 13 pounds shot weight, I am calling them 12 pounds on the web page due to loosing approximately 1/2 pound cutting the bottom out. The very first one 'powdered out' due to the mold being cold and ended up only being 8 pounds after cutting the bottom out and pouring out all the un-melted powder. 8 pounds seems to be about the lower limit to me, not flimsy by any means but not that "wow this thing is heaver than I expected feel either". That is another of the advantages rotational molding has over injection molding, almost unlimited adjustment to wall thickness after the tooling is built. (Blow molding is in between and has some flexibility)

The lighter weights are safer to carry up a ladder, but heaver will last far longer in the sun. Part of UV protection is the outer surface shielding the inner surface, so you don't want to run them too thin. Only ran one with sand mixed in with the plastic (think it added 2 pounds) plan to try several more with much courser sand on my next run. Oh, and color changes are trivial with roto-molding just pour a different color powder in each time.

William

[Joe Spencer]

Actually William I contemplated a mold shell but not a rotational. I like your idea of using the rotational.