Stop Exterior Roosting Bats
Imagine you go out to get the mail or morning paper one summer morning and find small droppings all over the concrete of your front entry way. You don’t think much of it so you sweep or blow it off and go about your business. The next day you notice there are more droppings and repeat the process. What the heck is going on?
As the pattern continues, you eventually look up and see there are some dark objects (bats!) up where the brick exterior meets the overhang. It dawns on you that those droppings you’ve been sweeping off lately are bat droppings. Mystery solved. But, now you have a whole new set of questions.
The first question many people have is “Are those bats in my house?” And that is a really good question because if there is a gap of some kind, bats could be getting behind or underneath some trim and living inside the structure or a construction void.
A bat control company like Frontline Animal Removal can inspect and find if the bats are getting inside the structure. If the bats are inside, look through our other pages and posts for examples of how to deal with that.
But, for today’s post, we’re going to assume that the bats aren’t actually getting in the house. This begs the next question: “Can anything be done to keep the bats from roosting under my entry way overhang?” Read on for a neat solution.
Modification Discourages Bat Roosting
Bats roosting exteriorly, under an overhang is a common issue. For us we see it most often where:
1) The area below the overhang is tall
2) The exterior of the building has brick
3) The direction/orientation of the overhang provides the shade/heat/wind conditions the bats like
4) The bats feel protected there
To get the bats to not roost there anymore, the trick is to modify the area to make them unable to roost in the spots their presence has shown they like.
Modification entails changing the landing zones and amounts of protection offered. Forcing the bats to be more exposed makes them uncomfortable. Even subjecting them to more turbulent airflow can cause them to abandon a roosting spot.
Take a look at this video where Ryan shows a small modification that kept the bats from their preferred spot. A little change made a big difference.
Exterior Bat Roost Modification
As you saw in the video, Ryan added some bent aluminum trim to the former landing and roosting spot of these bats. It doesn’t look bad and seems pretty easy. We think it looks a lot better than netting.
But, the change to the old roosting spot provides change the bats don’t like. Without the same conditions and level of protection, they will find a new spot to roost. That is the goal and stops the daily clean-up of the front porch.
