Bats Crawling Under Doors & Coming Out Of Heat Registers!

My name is Benjamin Vaughan and I am a residential bat specialist in Ontario. If you haven’t already I recommend that you first watch my video on residential bat problems. That video explains why and how bats get into our houses & living spaces.

Each year hundreds of people across Ontario hire us bat proof their houses because bats
showing up inside their homes. Most want to know two things. How soon can you get here and what can I do in the meantime to
stop the bats coming inside Now I cannot 100% guarantee it, but if you follow these instructions it should limit the bats ability
to get into your living spaces and definitely keep them out of your bedrooms so you can at least get a good nights sleep.

If you watched my video on residential bat basics you would know that bats show up inside houses because they generally live in the walls of houses and not attics which are too hot in summer and too cold in winter. After entering the roof they use gaps beside plumbing pipes and chimneys to get into the walls and in some houses they can travel all the way down the walls to unfinished spaces like basements or furnace rooms and then move from room to room by crawling under doors.

Our goal here is to stop the bats from emerging into our living space and take away their ability to crawl under doors.

Here is what we are gonna do:

1. Isolate the basement. Because basements are the most common spot bats first enter living spaces we are going to concentrate most of our efforts here by putting a towel under the door to the basement or installing a floor sweep if you go down there a lot.
If your basement is finished put a towel under the door to the furnace room or any other unfinished space. If there is a grill on the furnace room door cover this with bug screen and tape in place. If your basement is unfinished anywhere look at the ceiling for gaps beside pipes and ducts and seal those gaps with foam. These are common places where bats first come out to the walls.

2. Make sure the damper in your fireplace is closed and closed tightly. Also check for gap around fireplace doors and wood and gas inserts as these are common places where bats get in.

3. Mostly found in older homes the gaps around are a place where bats can enter your living space. They are tricky to deal with, my best advice is fully slide them into the wall cavity, cover the gaps with cardboard and tape in place.

4. Seal any holes in the walls. Honestly, even a small opening is big enough for a bat to get in.

5. Seal any gaps around pipes under cabinets. Strange as it is the small (sometimes big) gap around pipes are big enough for the bats to use.

6. Isolate your bedroom. Unless there is a hole in the wall the only way a bat can get into a finished room is by crawling under a door or coming out a heat register. So isolate your bedroom and get a good nights sleep by putting a towel under your door or installing a door sweep. Door sweeps are awesome i recommend them highly. Then put bug screen on any heat register. Either tape over top or remove the grill and place it over the hole before jamming the grill back in place.

There you go, I hope this helps. Try to remember that bats are not aggressive and very few have rabies and your odds of dying of bat rabies is something like 1 in half a billion.