A bat got in my house

A bat got in my house. What would you do to make sure it doesn't happen again?

 

Find out how it got in and plug the hole.

 

Yep and it doesn't take much of a gap for them to get in. A friend of mine had bats in his attic that got in thru gaps in the old tin roof. Even though the roof didn't leak he had a new metal roof installed which ended his bat problem. Ripping the old roof off scared the bats away and the new tightly fit roof prevented them from coming back.

If you have a chimney you ought to check it out also.

 

If you have any windows open, don't forget to check the screens. Sometimes they can be fitting or torn at the frame just enough that something like that trying to get in can find it but not enough to be obvious at first glance. Prime areas to start looking are under eaves or peaks, but definitely don't stop there.

 

If you have an accessible attic I would go in and check for fecal material. Will be unevenly formed and sometimes shiny. If you find small piles of it, shine your light up to the roof underside; that is where they would have been roosting when depositing the fecal material. Hopefully they are not there now. If a chimney penetrates the attic, focus hard on that area. Flashing/caulking moves over the years.

The lack of fecal material would be a good sign and possibly mean that the bat was a “lone wolf” that accidentally entered.

I’ve know of them to roost in between storm door and house door especially if the storm door didn’t latch or has a gap in it. They like to crawl in tight places. When in between doors, sooner or later the main door will open and they will crawl in that way too.

Fireplaces are another way into a house. The dampers never seal that well.

 

Thank you. I will check all this and get back to you all with what I find. In the meantime, what is a good way to deter bats from even coming near my house? I have looked at poisons online and sound-based devices as deterrents. What is most effective at keeping them from wanting to get anywhere near your house?

 

Some states have laws against killing bats. Only thing I know of is making your house tight enough where they can't gain entrance forcing them to look elsewhere.

 

There is no way to deter bats or birds from coming near your house. The electronic repellers simply don’t work except possibly in small, confined spaces that don’t have structural angles, turns, inside corners, etc that would cause a dead space or “shadow” against the electronics. Don’t even try them.

How often has this happened?

 

I have a couple bat houses 50' from my house containing hundreds of bats and they have never "tried" to enter the house. If you have no easy entrance into your home they will not come in. If you have a gable vent without screen or holes in your trim then it's almost asking them or some other animal to come inside.

 

I bought a house about a year and a half ago which had a bat problem in the past. In three spots, there is a piece of screen-looking material attached to the house such that the bats could squeeze through it to exit the house but have to deal with the spiky ends of the metal if they tried to go back in. Seems to be doing the job well, as I have had no evidence of a bat being in the house since I've owned it.

 

Just one bat in four years.

 

I looked in the attic. I could barely see even with a flash light. What passes for an attic is long and wide but only a few feet high. There is insulation and what looks like saw dust or loose insulation everywhere on the floor of this attic. Where I could see, I couldn't distinguish any bat droppings. There were hills and valleys in the insulation on the floor of it that I couldn't see over so there are lots of areas where I could not check for bat droppings. It's not safe to crawl out onto. I couldn't see well enough to tell if there were bats hanging from the top. From what I could see, there weren't any. I would think the chimney would come down just to the right of where I was stanging on the ladder, but I couldn't tell where it was.

Now what?

 

Since it's only happened once, I wouldn't worry about it too much. It's probably easier to inspect the attic from the outside. Soffit and gable or roof vents have screen wire that prevents insects from entering so that would be one of the places to look [for ripped screen]