How To Get Rid Of & Remove Bats In the Chimney

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Bats love to live in the chimneys of homes and other buildings. Chimneys provide all of the roosting requirements of many of the colonizing bats, particularly female bats who need a warm, safe place in which to raise their young.



Here we see some photos of bats living in buildings. In the top shot, you see several bats wedged in between some of the gaps in the flu of a chimney. Bats often feel most secure when they can squirm into tight gaps. Bat like to fly into chimneys, because they are high off the ground and easy for the bats to enter and exit.

Why Do Bats Like To Live In Chimneys?
Bats live on every continent in the world with the exception of Antarctica, which is too cold for them. They particularly like tropical and rain forest climates, but they can be found everywhere else as well. Colonies of bats often live in caves because they provide shelter for the bats where they can hang from the ceiling with little risk of harm from predators. For the same reason, bats will also live in human shelters, such as chimneys and homes. Colonies of female bats live in the fireplaces, walls, and chimneys of homes and chimneys where they are safe from most predators and can have babies in groups.

What Are The Signs
There are several signs you can look for if you believe bats are occupying a chimney. The most obvious sign is if you actually see bats entering or exiting the chimney. If you haven?t seen them entering or exiting the chimney, enlist the help of some friends and observe the chimney at dusk. Have several people placed around the home to watch for the bats coming into or leaving the chimney. Bats generally exit and enter as a group, so if the chimney is being monitored, you should be able to see them fly out at dusk in search of insects and water. If you see one bat inside the working or living areas of a chimney, it is possible that it has crawled down from the fireplace through a wall, a crack, or a gap. You can be sure that the single bat you see is not alone; it will be part of a colony of bats living in the chimney. Another sign that there are bats in the chimney is if you hear squeaking or rustling sounds coming from the walls or the fireplace. A colony of bats in its first year of occupation of a chimney will typically number at least 40 bats, and they make noise when they are all awake and moving around. This is easiest to hear at dusk and dawn when they are preparing to leave as a group, or they are returning as a group. Another sign that bats are living in your chimney is if you smell the odor of guano. Bats leave a large amount of droppings called guano, and the droppings have a noticeable odor. Even if you don?t go up into the fireplace where the bats are roosting, you will smell the guano as you get close to it.

Examine For Signs Of Guano
Another way to check for the evidence of bats living in your chimney is to examine the outside of the chimney for signs of urine or guano. Urine stains are visible on lighter colored chimney sidings and other materials, so look up towards the top of the chimney along the walls and on the roof for urine stains. You can also look for guano that is stuck to the sides of the chimney, piled on the roof, or in piles on the ground. Piles indicate an entry point for the bats as bats randomly flying around and leaving droppings do not cause a pile up of guano. An entry point where many bats are leaving droppings as they enter and exit the chimney will cause piles of guano to build up around and below the entry point. Bats also carry oil on their skin that can rub off on the chimney as they squeeze through the entry point. If you see a brownish oily stain on the chimney on a vent, louver, or near a crack or gap of some sort, that could be the entry point.

What Can You Do If You Find Bats In A Chimney
Once you?ve confirmed the presence of bats in your chimney, you need to find the entry point if it hasn?t already been determined. Pay particular attention to the corners of the roof, near vents in the upper siding or the roof, and louvers that might be damaged and allowing the bats entry. You need to check for other damage to the chimney that could be allowing access to bats as well, such as a broken windowpane, missing brick, or a hole in the wood or siding. Bats can enter a chimney through an opening as small as 3/8 of an inch, so you must be very thorough in your search. Once you find the entry point, you must start to plan how to get rid of the bats. There are no repellants, such as light or sound that effectively and permanently remove bats. It is illegal to trap them or to fumigate them; the only legal and permanent method for removing bats is to perform a live exclusion of the bats and then seal all entry points so that the bats cannot return.

In order to Get rid of bats in an Chimney, you should hire an expert. The removal of bats is not the kind of thing that you'd hire bat pest control for. Bat extermination is not what you should be thinking. It is not legal or ethical to kill bats and not the right way to get the job done. Bats can be difficult to keep away and bat prevention is not an option until all the bats are safely removed, not via bat trapping, but via professional exclusion services


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