So, How much does bat removal cost?

How much does bat removal cost is defiantly the most popular question we get from people on an hourly basis. You want to know what your investment would be on the property, and that is understandable. Bat-proofing is like any other service provided. Time and money vary in every situation and specific details. With answering the phones for the office, I can guarantee you it is hard to shock me anymore with bat stories or even the state of a home. Whether it was vacant for some time or recently built, there is always room for some bat colony to come in and take over.

Your Home’s Weak Spots

The biggest thing about bats is they tend to enter in through weak points on a home. These can range in materials, thus ranging in cost and even time. Bat removal can be an easy task but also very difficult. The larger the bat colony and the longer they have been roosting there it can make it very difficult to make sure you find every little nook and cranny that they can use to enter in the home or building. Essentially you want to make sure you have covered most everywhere you have two materials meeting as those are your weakest points on a home. Therefore, a lot of dormers and chimneys get the most attention.

Bat Removal Pricing

So, with that, we can transition into pricing. With more dormers on a home, you must expect a slightly higher cost. There are more surface area and more “problem” areas that a bat proofer will have to cover. If you have a two-story home with one dormer will most likely cost you less than if you have two story home with six dormers. Yes, we have had some homes with that many dormers. Then you have houses with smaller dormers or larger dormers that can even fit two windows in them that are only slightly smaller than the main roof on the whole home. While these are easier than many different little dormers, they can still be time-consuming with the amount of area that they cover.

Different Sized Dormers

Dormers are one of the most easily accessible bat entries and thus, one of bat proofers biggest foes. You can expect a fancier price tag with fancier niceties on the home. Mainly, this applies to Victorian style homes as they can be very detailed on the exterior. That is, one pull that homeowners have to them is their intricate molding and denting on the exterior of the home. Because of HGTV people love that stuff, want to venture a guess who else loves that stuff? Oh yeah, bats.

Once you move past some of the more natural things to see from google earth, we get into things that might be even harder to see and discern. With soffits on a home, it can be tough to judge the quality and the state that the soffit is in while merely looking at the soffit on the google earth or even from the street. Sometimes even our technicians must get up close and personal with the home to see those dime size hole areas to help us get a cost for the amount of caulking or amount of screening that will be needed to seal up the home from re-entry.

Every Home Is Unique

Because of the different designs and all the different materials meeting on a home, you can have multiple entry points or even one huge area that could take more screening than caulking on that particular spot. When doing bat removal, you have a more limited area of spots that bats are most likely taken advantage of in the first place. It is when you move into the bat proofing part and making sure the bats cannot come back into the structure that you genuinely dive into the sheer number of small cracks and crevices that are on a home.

Ridge Vents

Don’t even get any of us here started on ridge vent. I have to tell ya, we have had some exciting stories come through here with people replacing their roof, and now their roof guy wants to put on a new venting on the home because this is the new thing that everyone needs to have. While some ridge vents are fantastic and provide some of the best venting circulation compared to gable and box vents, it can also be one of the biggest causes of not just bat colony infestations but also squirrels or birds.

Now, like all things, not all ridge vents are inadequate. But guess what, they also make a cheaper version of ridge vents that don’t withstand EVERYTHING. Yes, weather, bugs, and other usual things are, of course, no problem. Now add appendages to these, and it is a little more vicious of a creature to deter from the home. We have seen pictures of bats chew through lots and lots of plastic.

So Is Plastic A Better Option?

What a perfect transition to the use of plastic. Plastic is the cheapest version of a product you can find from venting options to straws for your drinks. The one thing they do not like to tell you about plastic is it’s cheap to make but expensive to fix. It is no brainer that mass producing a plastic product like specific ridge vents saves the manufacturing and more importantly, the consumer mega dollar bills. But what they do not tell you (unless you paid attention in science class) is that to mold plastic you must apply heat. Well when your ridge vent is sitting on the top of your home in the middle of summer, lots of heat is being applied to that sucker. So, we have heat in the summer to loosen the ridge vent which can, in turn, loosen screws used to hold it down.

Wait, That’s How They Get In?

What happens when things loosen up? Yup, you guessed it, pests come in from those areas that now have gaps in the home. Well, what about winter? It’s not that hot then. You are one hundred percent correct, but when you freeze plastic, then you have the issue of cracking. What it comes down to is weather is not great for plastic. Yes, it is a more expensive option but investigate your materials when you are doing any work on your home. Did you know you can YouTube video footage of a bat just walking through a ridge vent?

How Much Does Bat Removal Really Cost?

When it comes to the question of how much does bat removal cost, no one knows the extent of your issue until they can see any cleanup and any venting issues on the home. With most companies that are worth their time and expertise are going to charge you according. Anyone coming out for way less than their competition’s prices is just that, less. It is super easy to get into bat proofing and tell people you know what you are doing because Fred at Home Depot showed you how to use a spray foam can and buy a ladder. But what it comes down to is quality information, quality materials, and trained people. I don’t want to pay five dollars for an iced mocha frappe, but I do because sometimes Casey’s coffee doesn’t have that extra espresso shot you need to get the job done.