How We Remove Bats from Your Attic

Bat in attic vent

Female bats are attracted to attic vents and will form large colonies there. They usually get past the vent and show up inside attics. Sometimes bats can live in walls. Click to hear the story of a customer who had this problem.

I have been removing bats from the attics of customers in Johnson City, Kingsport, Bristol, Elizabethton, and Abingdon now for more years than I care to count. I have seen people try all sorts of crazy things to get rid of their bats. Quality bat removal does not involve trapping, relocating, or poisoning bats. Quality bat removal involves excluding (sealing out) the bats from the home. Proper bat removal doesn’t just get rid of the bats. It insures that they don’t come back. Because of this I decided that it would be a good idea to put some quality information out on my site.

I really like bats and they are protected by law and are highly beneficial. It is illegal to harm or be in possession of these animals . The average residential colony of bats can consume about a million bugs in a summer. Following the proper procedures for removing a colony helps insure the survival of the bats as well as the peace of mind of the homeowner. So, removing bats from the home correctly is critical.

Home owners must also keep in mind that the bats that are living in your attic are protected by federal law. It is unlawful to harm them or to be in possession of them and penalties can be very severe. Additionally, trapping the bats and relocating them is not recommended by quality wildlife professionals. Bats are very attached to their roost site and are highly mobile and excellent at relocating their home. They spend thousands of hours in the air and have excellent “road maps” in their heads. Bats are also migratory. If a bat can find its way from one cave to another back to your home year after year, the odds are very good that it will wind up back at your home once it is released.

So, if you can’t kill them or relocate them, what do you do? Simple - use an excluder device. Excluder devices can come in various shapes and sizes, but they all do the same thing. An excluder device allows for bats to exit the building but not to reenter. Excluder devices must be installed well or bats will bypass them and renter. Installing them can also be very risky. Two hands often have to be off the ladder to make the installation. A fall is possible and at this type of height can be deadly. It is often advisable to call a professional.

Permanently removing bats from a home first requires that entrances into the home to be sealed. Finding and sealing all the entrances is a challenge. Bats can enter cracks as small as ¼” inch and prefer to enter buildings at their high points. Understanding the common entrance points is important. Bats can enter chimneys, basements, exterior walls, vents, or any other point that suits their requirements. Once all the potential and nonessential entrances are sealed, a one-way door device or excluder can be installed over the remaining entrances. Care must be taken that bats are not trapped in the home. Trapped bats will die and rot in the home. Bat colonies can include over 100 individuals and can create a serious odor in a home.

Several different styles of one-way door can be used, but all do the same thing; they allow bats to exit but not to return. Some take the form of a downward sloping tube. The tube is too small in diameter to allow bats to fly through and too slippery to crawl up. Bats go out to feed but can’t get back in.

Another style of device is a simple curtain of mesh or cloth that is hung over the entrance. A bats instinct is to fly or crawl downward to exit its roost. A curtain that is unattached at the bottom allows the bat to do just that. At takeoff the bat discovers that it cannot fly away like it normally does. So, it simply crawls down the wall until it reaches the bottom of the curtain. However upon its return it forgets how it exited and follows long established memory and scent paths back to the old exit, which is now blocked by the curtain. Devices like the ones described above are referred to as excluders by professionals.

Bats may use any potential exit that is available. Entrances may or may not be linked on the interior of the building. Each entrance that is not linked to another must have an excluder installed to prevent trapping bats.