Bat proofing my attic. I hope.

Last winter we noticed we had a little friend hanging in our gable vent.

Source

I told myself I would get rid of him, and then by the time I had gotten back up to my attic, he was gone. Well, we had an energy company come through to our property a couple weeks ago to see if we could get assistance with energy savings. They checked out our attic to see how much more insulation we would need, and there, hanging in my gable vent, was the bat.

I thought you were gone?!

Not this time, he was back, and the company said that they would not do any work until the bat was removed.

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So, I knew I had to do something, but I never had any time, or a ladder that would go that height.

A neighbor down the street ended up lending me his ladder, and today I decided to go up to the attic to investigate.

Well, the bat was gone again, and this time, I was going to get ahead of the situation.

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I needed a temporary fix, and so I grabbed 1/2" mesh I have laying around to staple to the front of the gable vent.

With the help of my wife, I propped this monstrous ladder up against the house.

To my surprise, I noticed that the wire mesh that was behind the gable vent was still intact. This means that the Bat was not getting into the house through this dented in gable vent like I had thought.

But just in case, I grabbed the rodent barrier kit we had bought, and cut up a couple of small thin pieces.

I then installed the barrier kit into the dents of the gable vent, and put up the plastic mesh over it.

Stapled it to the side of the house.

temporary fix

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Took a photo of course.

Luckily when I was in my teens, I had painted houses, and so I remembered a couple of safety items for climbing up a ladder (always three points of contact). However, now that I am a lot older, with a family, I don't really think this is something I want to be doing in the future.

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Anyway, since there were no holes in the mesh behind the gable vent, I went over to an area of the house where bat removal experts told me there was a small hole bats could be getting in.

So I propped up my other ladder and went up there to put in the rodent barrier wire mesh.

By the way, this stuff is no joke. When I opened the package, I wasn't wearing the gloves yet that came included within the package, and I got a metal splinter in my palm.

Anyway, I pushed the mesh in there and hoped that it would work.

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Of course, when I was up there, I noticed that my gutters also had to be cleaned out of pine needles. So I spent time doing that as well.

After that was complete, I knew I would have to get the back of the house. But with 2 kids and my wife off to work soon, I'll have to save that for another day.

Let's just hope it doesn't snow soon. 😬