# Whipped up some bat houses for Arbor Day event



## boltmaster (Aug 16, 2011)

Shavano Park where I live has an Arobor Day city event each year and this year's theme is Bats. So I got volunteered by the committee to build some bat houses to be raffled off. I wouldn't have normally built Single chamber houses but the 2, 3 or more chamber style would have been more than I wanted to donate in material and especially time. But everyone seems happy with these guys. Made 13 all the same several different stains from the blue here to gray and brown. I couldn't resist putting the red eyes on them. Picture is sideways for some reason.


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## boltmaster (Aug 16, 2011)

Here is the other colors


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## WildThings (Jan 2, 2007)

Very Cool!


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## 3192 (Dec 30, 2004)

How high do they need to be mounted?? Plans?? Thanks for sharing!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## boltmaster (Aug 16, 2011)

galvbay said:


> How high do they need to be mounted?? Plans?? Thanks for sharing!
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


Best results are 15-20 feet up in an open area. The side of a house or barn or on a tall pole. Can be in a tree but you need about 6-10 feet min clearance all around the house. These very simple plans can be found on DIY network or google bat house plans. I used three 6' long 8 inch wide fence Picketts to make each one. Around here the fir pickets I used are about $1.50 and a cedar is $4.00 at a lowes or Home Depot. I made the front and back panals up by biscuit joining and gorilla glue. Then used construction adhesives and air brad nails to assemble. I also put nylon screen mesh net on the inside to give a good grip surface for the bats. All told for all 13 houses I spent about $125 in matierials. And it took about 20 hours of time not including the between wait on the glue up of the panels. I only glued up about 4 at a time out of the 26 total 4 clamps per panel. The bat decorations were free handed out of scrap on my bandsaw


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