Building the Bat House

I decided to work with Rough Cedar wood.  It does not rot and the bats like the roughness of the wood.  Using cedar did make the cost of the project go higher, but I decided that I would rather make it right than make it cheap.


My initial thoughts were to overlap the boards like I saw in the picture (see last post).  When I went to Lowes to purchase everything I noticed they had tongue and groove 8 inch cedar planks.  That make building the box much easier!


Since the cedar planks came in 8 foot boards, I decided to go for a 4 x 2 x 2 foot house.  The bodies of the bats around us are about 2-3 inches in size, so if I did my math right (length x width x height) that should come to 27,648 cubic inches of space for the bats.  That is not including the space within the peaked roof.

When I put the box together, I glued the tongue and groove boards together and used metal strapping on the inside to make it more secure.

The 3'' PVC pipes with a cap glued on are where the poles will be inserted. I could not find 3'' pipe clamps, so I made my own out of the same metal strapping I used on the inside.

MISTAKE I MADE:  I put metal strapping on the ends on the inside BEFORE I put on the 3 inch PVC pipe pole holders on.  Wrong!   I ended up hitting the inside metal straps about 10 times.  So, outside pole holders first, inside end braces second...

As to where the bats would hang from, I decided to make 7 panels (about 3 inches apart from each other).  I uses 1 x 2 cedar trim boards to make a frame and then stapled on 1/2 inch plastic mesh onto the frames.   I ended up just screwing the frames in from the sides.

The roof is still the cedar  tongue and groove boards.  I overlapped them a bit to allow for rain to run off.  I roofed it with two layers.  The first layer is a peal and stick tight seal window flashing.  The second layer was peal and stick asphalt shingles.  Both of these came in rolls, so all I had to do was measure, cut, and lay it down.

MISTAKE I MADE: I started at the peak at the top instead of the bottom.  I had only one row down across the peak before I noticed my mistake, so the top had an extra layer over it.

Even though it was peal and stick shingles, I did use roofing nails just to make sure they weren't going anywhere in a wind storm.

The roof is connected to the box with just four pieces of metal strapping in the ends.  This way if I have to remove the top for some reason all I have to do is unscrew 8 screws and lift it off.

I found a cool bat design online, printed it off, and cut it out for my stencile.  My daughter placed the stencil on the side and covered all the rest of the area with tape and garbage bags.  She sprayed on the black paint and voila!  The real bat cave construction is done.  Getting it in the air is next...