Bat House Forum

[Markcuda]

Mine are to put up 2 new bat houses.
Maybe 2 on the same metal pole, not sure yet.
I am leaning twords 2, five chamber houses.

[cloudman75]

Hello Markcuda,
Have not heard much from you recenty so glad you are still active. I have two plastic shells which William Bagwell made and I obtained them from him. They need baffles. They are large, I have not looked into how many chambers I will use, but thinking about 4 to 5. I have the rough cedar boards on hand to do the job. These baffles will be made removable because I don't have a router or know how to use one but do have one house with removable baffles that just slip up inside the shell using 3/4 inch board spacers. I usually put one one inch chamber in a bat house to give the females a little extra room to birth pups if they so desire. I probably will make a couple more wooden hollow poles like I did last year based on Terry Lobdell's idea. I made mine out of treated 1x4s put
together with deck screws. It is still straight after several houses it supports, three to be exact. The wind storms we had this summer have blown the channel
of steel buried in an 80 lb bag of quickcrete off plumb. I'll reset the hollow pole to plum before spring although the bats don't care as they are using the houses with a tilt on them. I shot at a squirrel this week that was tearing up my roof of a bat house. It has damaged the roof of my big five chamber which is a real pain to get down and back up. I missed the squirrel with my 22 rifle. I have 6.5 acres and not in the city here. Next time the squirrel comes back I may
use a scatter gun. My brother in law next door found his vinyl siding torn and a bed with acorns stored in it this week. Since no one hunts squirrels anymore they are becoming quite destructive and there is no closed season on them here. My blue bird houses have had the holes enlarged by squirrels. Anyway, I won't tolerate them messing up my bats. My realatives are making remarks about my bat houses as I have 5 up in the air with two under construction.
I wish all happy bating in 2012 and good health.

Frank

[William Bagwell]

First goal is a couple of bat houses on our house near where they are roosting anyway. Already have one ready to hang, just waiting on a second one since I'm going to set up scaffold. 50 pounds is a bit much to handle by myself off of a ladder and we only have one ladder that will reach as high as the bats are roosting.

Next priority is a second pole to mount a bat house on out in the field. (Former pasture so we do not refer to it as a lawn...) May also try to move the pole I put up last year. It is on the edge of a garden so it became part of the fence. A *tall* fence to keep deer out... Think it will get used more in a more cleared area. Both poles will have mounting cleats for adding future boxes if / when they get made.

William

[Markcuda]

Well great guys
As you all know, pictures will be a mandatory thing
I still am playing with the idea of a small diameter utility pole.
A 6 inch base and a 5 inch top.
I pretty much killed the idea of using a treated 4x4 or a 6x6, read a few stories of them bowing?

[William Bagwell]

Frank, looking forward to seeing how you build out your shells! As many bats as you have you are bound to have more than just a few tire kickers living in them;-) Have been meaning to apologize to you for all the mix ups that day. Not only the mis-understanding about the vent slots, but the extra time you had to wait. When you called the first time I assumed you were just leaving your house and I had a good 20 extra minutes. Then I had to rush like mad when I found out you were waiting. My truck was trapped so it ended up being my son being with me instead of my wife...

BTW, the side rails with the long slots can be made with out a router.

I have a router but due to the time involved in setting it up for just a few parts, I have cut all of my long slots (so far) with a table saw. One of my remaining stumbling block on selling completed bat houses is a twin (perhaps even triple) router table built so I knock out side rails quick.

William

[William Bagwell]

Well great guys
As you all know, pictures will be a mandatory thing
I still am playing with the idea of a small diameter utility pole.
A 6 inch base and a 5 inch top.

Pictures? Pictures of poles... like these?





Those were back last March I think. When I switched from the short to long top section I saw I could not assemble it in the air, so I took the big pole down and assembled it on the ground. Still have the short top and a second pole, can measure them in the AM if you want?

William

[Markcuda]

William, no, you don't need to measure them for me
Yes, I like pole pictures

[cloudman75]

No problem William. I can always plug up holes, but think I will be happy with the way they are. I can guarantee you that my baffles won't look as good as yours, however the bats don't mind ugly from my experience. I'll post photos, and be axious to see any you and Markcuda post.
Button up your sweater Marcuda when you ride the Harley this winter and good luck on getting some bats this spring.

Frank

[Dave Miller]

I have all the parts to make two more slate exterior houses for the wildlife refuges where I volunteer. I also have the parts to make a 2-chamber slate house that I want to put on my chimney. I just need more time to put them together.

I also picked up a box of 16"x16" slates which I might use to make a wider house. But I mainly got the slates to replace a bumble bee/garter snake lair that I had to remove.

Dave

[Erik]

This year not a lot of building my own bat houses, but still a lot of plans that I hope to realize this year.
Some as a volunteer, others as a part of my daily job:

- promoting the brochure that I wrote about "Building(s) for bats" (how to build a batfriendly building) (work).
- designing a large rocket box house for some tree dwelling species (work).
- developing a research and development plan for using bat houses for bat conservation in urban areas (work).
- trying to organize a national symposium about bat houses (volunteer).
- repairing 45 small bat houses and installing them in a new research area (forest) (volunteer).
- starting with a website about bat houses and a Bat Houses Forum for the Netherlands and Belgium (volunteer).
- joining other "bat house workers" (builders and researchers) to exchange ideas (volunteer).

I am going to be busy again... : )

Erik

[flyin-lowe]

The work that needed to be done at my place is finally done and I didn't have to do it. My house is on a utility pole that is actually on State Park property. The owner of the pole gave me permission to put it up. My only concern was that there was some shrubs and brush that was pretty close to my bat house. The State Park decided to clean out all the brush and left only the smaller pine trees. So now the nearest try to my bat house is behind it and is probably 30-40 foot away. Hopefully that will help. I currently have my house for sale so I don't plan on adding any bat housing or purple martin housing this year in case we happen to sell our place and have to move.

[kent borcherding]

my bat house building days are over , but am working on some new designs .

Several years ago I built some bat houses to place on the estate of a very famous architect , interesting project and I was treated well . the estate manager approved 2 of the designs .

Since then I have drawn several more designs that could be used where the bat house design could be a stumbling block , would not look well in the surroundings .

The designs would have a ventilation system where internal temps could be easily controlled and low cost to hold big browns.

There are 3 interesting sites where I have been asked to be a consultant for designing and placement of some bat houses - perfect chance to try some of the designs.

[Markcuda]

Very interesting reading on what other people are/will do this year for the little bats

[Terry Lobdell]

A lot of great ideas and pictures on this thread! Makes me inspired for my plans this year! Am especially glad to hear from you Kent!

I've got a cooperative project with the Army Corps of Engineers for 7 large maternity boxes at Woodcock Dam.

Am going to mount 2 more observation boxes at state parks, Oil Creek and Moraine.

Building some large maternity boxes for Cook's State Forest. They actually had to close their ranger's office due to 1,000+ little browns roosting in the attic!

Building 20 small 3 crevice boxes for our local conservation district to sell.

Much maintenance work at existing maternity sites.

Experiment with a method of raising a large bat house and pole with a boom or chain hoist....so no climbing is needed.......this may be the most important as it is so time consuming and dangerous climbing up and down a ladder to mount a bat box....