Bat exclusion is as much about protecting your business, family, your home and your community’s agricultural ability to continue growing food, as it is about protecting bats, protecting the bat’s environment and protecting our community’s farmland. In order to better understand how easy it is to protect bats and their environment, as well as protect your commercial property against the potential harm from bat rabies and disease, United Bat Control provides these exclusion procedures and guidelines:
Information: One of the first recommendations we make to anyone that thinks there is any possibility that they have bats in their home, house, restaurant or commercial building is to do a complete inspection of the structure. Attention to detail is the difference between a successful inspection and failure to determine how the bats come in and go out of your building.
The entire outside of the building must be inspected. The larger populations of bats, such as the little Brown bat, are able to get inside a building that has cracks, slits or gaps that are only one quarter inch by one and one half inches and they will get inside a hole that is five eighths inches by seven eighths inches. Other bat species are able to get inside your house with even smaller openings.
While looking for building cracks and gaps, inspect and search the areas around the air conditioning and heating units on the roof for commercial properties, the family chimney, the edge of the roof, the roof overhang, the valley of the roof, roof eaves, the apex of the gable (the triangular part of the wall that is between the edges of a sloping roof). Inspect the exterior of the building’s air conditioning ducts, attics, roof vents, dormers, siding and any telephone cable or television cable that has been attached to the exterior walls of the building. Remember that small holes are all bats need to enter the building.
Additional Information: We will suggest you continue your inspection of the building, but this time you are looking for bat droppings, also known as bat guano, as a sign of the possibility of a bat colony being inside your commercial property or home. Be careful but thorough in checking the roof and chimney for bat guano droppings. Also be on the lookout for Rub Marks made by bats entering and exiting the building. You are looking for a stained area that is yellowish brown to black-brown in color, slightly sticky and will have a smooth polished appearance from high use. You want to give the outside of the building or home a thorough look and then you want to inspect the attic and air conditioning pathways.
The attic inspection is imperative for a proper bat removal inspection. A professional bat inspector will be wearing a respirator to protect their lungs from inhaling potential disease carried by bat guano droppings. These droppings will also help the professional bat removal expert determine the type of bats that are in the attic and help in the planning to do the bat removal humanely and protect the bat population from unnecessary harm. The attic inspection will tell the United Bat Control expert the size of the bat colony and where they are living in the attic – and highlight where the bats are entering the building or house, be it the building’s roof, chimney, the roofs edge or the knot hole around the attic window.
Bat Information: Bats leave their living quarters, their roost, at dusk for a night of flight and eating. They help the environment by eating millions of insects that are often harmful to human beings. They carry seeds and help in pollinating flowers that benefit our ecology and environment. So usually our next step in our building and house inspection is to stand outside at dusk and observe the bats as they leave the building or home. What one expert may have missed with the close hand inspection of the building is caught and supplemented by the United Bat Control expert in observing and following the bats leaving the roost.
Equipment for Removing Bats: The installation of patented bat exclusion devices is the next step in the process of removing bats from your commercial property, house or business. During our dusk inspection and observation of the bats leaving your property, we determine whether one or more exclusion devices will best serve the needs of the bat colony. Once the exclusion device locations are determined and the best number of exclusion devices to be used is determined, our bat control, bat removal professional will re-enter the house or business and install the device.
The installation of our patented One Way Bat Exclusion Device is done so that the entire bat colony will leave the building. This is normally a one, two or three day process depending upon the size of the colony. You do not want to go to the effort of removing 99% of the colony; it is imperative that you get 100% of the bats out and do so humanely and safely.
Building Repair: Prior to, during and upon completion of the installation of the One Way Bat Removal Exclusion Device, it is imperative to patch up, repair and fix all of the cracks, slits, gaps and holes that were found during the bat removal inspection. Once you have given the bats a way to get out the building, you do not want them to be able to return to your house or business. It is in the best interest of all parties to make sure that you seal the gaps permanently so that the bats are unable to return.
Building Clean Up: It is imperative for the health and safety of everyone who enters your business or home for a thorough cleaning of the building grounds, attic, roof and walls to remove bat guano. Bat guano is a breeding ground for micro-organisms and in some cases will become a breeding ground for histoplasmosis, an infection that is able to cause harm to humans. Bat guano can accumulate in walls, floors and ceilings. What is in plain site is not always the true amount of bat guano that needs to be removed from your home or business.