How to Animal Proof Your Home Against Bats

Posted on June 7, 2022 by virginia

Bats are terrible house guests. You do not want them anywhere near your residence, or even your property for that matter. So, if you live near wooded areas or bodies of water, or have actually seen bats flying around at dusk, you would be wise to animal-proof your home against bat intrusions and subsequent damages.

Continue below to learn the bat abatement facts that will get you started on protecting your home from nuisance bats.

Bats are Highly Destructive

Why are bats terrible house guests? In a few words, they are highly destructive creatures. When bats take up shelter inside your wall crevices, vents, attics, crawl spaces, gutters, or wall voids, you can guarantee one thing: they are going to damage the surrounding structures. Not only do bats chew through electrical wiring and tear down insulation, but they also soil and infect everything with excrement and parasitic organisms (i.e. lice, mites, fleas, ticks, etc.).

Aside from the bio-hazards they leave behind, bats are also structurally-damaging. Bat urine and droppings, also called guano, will accumulate in masses, and eventually seep through ceilings, drywall, floorboards, insulation, and more. This also generates a lingering odor in the living quarters of the home. They are also known to damage electrical wiring and built-in mechanical systems. Bats in the attic are common perpetrators of such damage.

Additional Risks of Having Bats in the House

Bats are also common carriers of several zooonic diseases and infections. These illnesses can be transmitted to both people and pets. Although not all bats have rabies, they are known as common carriers of the virus. As a deadly disease, it is important to stay on top of your pet’s Rabies vaccination every year. Aside from disease, bats can also pass on parasitic infections, like bat mites, fleas, and ticks.

Bat Prevention

Now to bat-proofing your home. There are several methods of bat control, which is a system of strategies that prevent bat intrusions and infestations. Such strategies might include using ultrasonic sonar devices, attic vent screens, chimney caps, draft guards, window screens, bat valves, structural sealing, which involves sealing up exterior holes and gaps that bats can use to gain access inside your house. It is strongly encouraged to consult with a licensed and insured bat removal and control company in Virginia for professional bat abatement and exclusion services.

Bat Infestation Season is Upon Us

The best time of year to ensure your house is animal-proofed and protected against nuisance bats is between April and August. This is when bats are birthing their young, which means they are fervently seeking shelter, especially in attics. Act now to prevent bat intrusions and infestations this summer.

Do you suspect that bats are living somewhere in or around your house or business? Contact Virginia Bat Pros at 804-729-9097 for affordable and prompt bat removal services in Virginia, including Richmond and all surrounding areas. We serve residential and commercial clients.

What You Need to Know About Bats if You Have Some Around Your Property

Posted on March 17, 2022 by virginia

Bats are an incredible species of mammal, and we are lucky to have them as a part of our surrounding Eco-system. Their high metabolic needs and diverse diets significantly impact our ecological communities by playing a vital role in pollination, seed dispersion, crop fertilization, insect control, protozoan hosting, ecotourism industries, and more. But where there are advantages, there are also disadvantages. If you have spotted bats around your property on a nightly basis, it is essential to better understand their behaviors so that you can better protect your home or business from bat damages and associated risks.

Continue reading to learn what you need to know about bats if you have them around your property.

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Nuisance Bats

Bats are common nuisances for home and business owners. They are attracted to dark, warm shelters to raise their young and hibernate through winter, including attics, crawl spaces, garages, sheds, roofs, and walls. They can enter through a crevice as tiny as 3/8^th inch, so it is easy for them to get inside a vulnerable structure. You can tell if you have bats in the house or around your property by looking for the signs. This includes hearing strange noises in the walls or attic at night, spotting animal droppings around windows or doors, smelling foul odors from attic or crawl space areas, and more.

Bat Damages

Bats can cause a long list of structural damages to a home, and the accumulation of their droppings can create an unsanitary, biohazardous environment. Furthermore, they pose a wide range of health risks since their guano can cause respiratory illnesses, and they may carry diseases and parasites like rabies, lice, mites, and more. Fortunately, several professional wildlife control companies offer restoration and decontamination services for damages caused by bats. They will remove the bats from the space using safe and humane methods, clean up the mess they made, sanitize the entire area, and restore any structural damages they caused from their stay.

Bats and Rabies

Many people wrongly assume that all bats have rabies. The truth is that bats are common carriers of the rabies virus, but that does not mean all bats are carriers, nor does it mean that carriers are infected. If a bat is rabid, you will be able to tell by a blood test, which can only be done correctly by a state’s Department of Health. A rabid bat is not likely to be a threat since they generally seek out isolation to die. In fact, bats that are not sick are not likely to attack either. They are more afraid of us than we are of them. It is very rare for one to bite or attack unless provoked. This is why regular vaccinations are so vital for pets.

Bat Removal and Control

To properly eliminate a bat problem, bats must first be removed, and then specific precautions must be taken to ensure they cannot reenter your home or building. There are many things you can do yourself to reduce the level of wildlife activity around your property, such as removing all food and water sources, including bird baths, squirrel feeders, pet food, gardens, and more. You can also install automatic motion lighting or ultrasonic sound machines, as well as, spread predatory urine or other non-toxic repellents around your yard. Just use water, ground hot pepper, and menthol oil to make a homemade b a t repellent.

Are you dealing with a nuisance bat problem in or around your property? Contact Virginia Bat Pros at 804-729-9097 for prompt and professional bat removal and control you can afford. We serve residential and commercial clients.

Summer is Bat Proofing Season

Posted on June 30, 2021 by virginia

Right is the time to really think about animal-proofing your house against nuisance bats. If you live near wooded or forested areas, or a large body of water, you are even more prone to bat activity around your property. Between the months of April and August, bats look for shelter in order to have their babies. Usually, that shelter winds up being residential attics! So, avoid being intruded by bats this season.

Use these bat control tips to ensure your home is fully protected all year long!

Protect Your House From Intruding Bats

Bats in the Attic

Although bats are Ecologically important to our surrounding environment and overall economy, they are terrible as house guests. When bats intrude our attics, crawl spaces, and wall voids, they can cause a long list of structural damages. Extensive drywall and insulation damages are just the tip of the iceberg, as their activity also destroys floorboards, stains ceilings, and causes terrible, lingering odors. Furthermore, bats are known carriers of several infectious diseases and nasty parasites, such as Rabies, Leptospirosis, lice, bat mites, ticks, fleas, and more.

How to Get Rid of Bats

When it comes to getting rid of bats, you never want to attempt the job yourself. Whether you have single bat in the house or a full colony of bats in the attic, your job is to contact a licensed Virginia bat removal company for professional assistance. If you are simply experiencing heightened bat activity around your property, and wish to abate any bat infestations or external property damages, you can implement some bat control methods on your own.

Do-It-Yourself Bat Control Tips:

► Locate Possible Entry Ways

Most bats can fit through a hole as small as 3/8ths of an inch! So, you can imagine just how easy it is for one to access your attic, siding, roof shingles, or other areas of your home. Take a walk around the outside of your house and look for holes, gaps, openings, and any other possible entry points for a bat.

Be sure to seal up anything you find, and then call a professional bat control company for more permanent solutions. They use top quality materials like caulk, mesh sheeting, stainless steel wool, and expanding foam insulation to seal out bats and keep your home looking nice.

► Implement Routine Inspections

After you are sure your home is sealed and protected against bat intrusions, it is wise to stay on top of routine inspections, both inside and out. Regularly check your attic and crawl space areas for signs of bats in the house. Also inspect the outside, looking closely at your siding, roofing, and nearby trees for signs of bat activity.

► Install Motion-Detection Technology

Bats will startle away at the eruption of bright light or noise. If you suspect that bats are coming too close to your property, or some particular area of your property, you could be successful keeping them away by installing motion-detection lighting or alarms. Now, if you have neighbors nearby, this might not be the most viable option, but this method can be useful in small applications.

Are you ready to get your home or business protected against bats? Contact Virginia Bat Pros at 804-729-9097 for comprehensive bat removal and control services in Richmond and all surrounding Virginia counties.

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How to Use One-Way Screening to Get Rid of Bats

Posted on January 10, 2020 by virginia

Sometimes, bats like to use your stuff as their own, namely for a place to live. This time of year, it is common for bats to roost inside jungle gyms, play sets, tree houses, bird houses, siding, soffits, roofing, attics, and more. If you are noticing bats flying in and out of a certain area of your property night after night, there is a simple and humane technique that might keep them out for good. It involves using one-way screening, which is inexpensive and easy to come by. Continue reading to learn where to get it, how to use it, and what to do if the bats still stick around.

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One-Way Mesh Screening

One-way screening is simply metal mesh material that is highly pliable. It is available in rolls or sheets at most home improvement stores. You can expect to pay between $4 and $11 for your materials, depending on how much you need and the retailor you choose. A couple great features of one-way screening is its light weight and flexibility, both of which makes it easy to handle and apply. Furthermore, it comes in bulk quantities, allowing you to custom cut the size you need to cover the space the bats are entering though.

How to Use One-Way Screening

One-way screening will allow bats to exit the area they continue to occupy each night, but it will not allow them to re-enter. So, the key is to install your mesh screening while bats are inside. This way, when they wake for the evening to hunt, they will squeeze through and leave, but they will not be able to squeeze back through the other way.

You see, all you have to do is cut a piece of your wire mesh screen to size. You need just enough material to cover the bottom and top of the entry point, including the sides. When you install the screening, you will need to leave a “lip” of screen handing off of the bottom. This is where the bats will squeeze through to get out, but they won’t be able to get back in this way.

Add Some Bat Houses

After you have excluded the bats with your one-way screening technique, it is encouraged to hang a bat house nearby to continue supporting the local bat populations. Furthermore, this will divert their focus on roosting in the bat house, rather than you own house! See our blog, “Tips for Adding Bat Houses to Your Property” to learn what you need to know about bat house installation and management.

How to Follow Up

Once you divert the bats away from their hang-out, it is important that you follow up by having your home inspected for bats. If you have one bat in or around your house, you likely have more. This is especially true when bats are found inside a home or building. To protect your home from future bat infestations, contact a local Virginia bat removal and control company for bat-proofing and abatement service.

Where to Get Safe, Non-Lethal Bat Control Service

Call Virginia Bat Pros at 804-729-9097 for safe and humane bat removal and control assistance in Old Dominion. We serve all of Virginia with 24 hour bat removal, as well as, numerous residential and commercial bat exclusion services, such as bat cleanup and restorations for bat damages. We even provide insurance work! Contact us at 804-729-9097 to request a free estimate, anytime.