The Bat House Project

For several years I've wanted to install a bat house, but it never seemed to get high enough on the priority list; until this year.  To be honest I haven't actually seen any bats at our house, but folks within a half mile of us see them regularly.  We have a little drainage pond about 300' behind our house; I figure this is a perfect habitat for the bats since there are zillions of mosquitoes hatched there every year.  So I took the plunge, acting on faith, and built my very own bat house.

In my research they cautioned about building the house too small.  So after checking out various options I settled on plans from the Wisconsin DNR (you can find them here).  I built two 3-4 chamber houses by slightly modifying the plans such that I could yield two houses out of a 4'x8' sheet of plywood (I gave the other house to my father-in-law).  I forget the exact cost, but it was probably around $50 for the lumber.  Overall cost was maybe around $75 which isn't too bad for two houses.  If I could do it over again I would have made the sides deeper since the front-most chamber is a pretty tight.  Then I'd probably make the spacers 1" instead of 3/4" since I used a plastic mesh on the panels.

Cutting out the lumber wasn't too bad.  My father-in-law only lives a mile away and has a nice table saw which I used to cut most of the pieces.  Cutting the angles even went smoothly.

Next I laid out all the pieces to make sure everything looked good before the big priming/painting job.  I was glad to see them fit together nicely.  If you're unfamiliar with bat houses, the bats will crawl up those crevices (chambers) and grab on to the panels.  This style of house can hold over 100 bats!

And of course every project is not without its mistakes.  Not sure what I did, but it was enough to draw blood and get sympathy from Mare (well, a picture at least).

Cutting the lumber was the easy part.  Next came the priming and painting marathon.  I couldn't use treated wood since it can be toxic to the bats.  In Northern climates the houses should be painted black so they stay warm.  So I wanted to make sure all the priming/painting was done well to avoid any premature rotting.  My little helper lent a hand with the priming.

After hours and hours of work, spread across a few days, the houses were finally painted and ready to construct.  When you paint the panels (instead of stain or no treatment) the experts recommend to install plastic mesh for the bats to grab onto as they crawl up the chamber.  I found this nice 3'x15' roll of mesh at Menards for about $7.  It worked great, stapled onto both sides of each panel.  This picture shows the house with top, back, and sides, but without the panels and front.

Then today I finally got the motivation to hang the house.  I wanted to put it down by the drainage pond (which we affectionately call the "Stormy Woods") since I figure it is teeming with bugs and bound to be a perfect habitat for a colony of bats.  This area is a green space owned by our subdivision.  I was a bit concerned that the house might draw too much attention, but it blends in well with the willows and poplars growing up in the pond.  Now that I built it, will they come?