Most people find out they have bats the same way: a scratching sound over the bedroom ceiling, a stain on the attic insulation, or one bat in the living room on a summer evening. The next question is always the same — how do we get rid of them and keep them out? The honest answer is that keeping them out is a building problem, not a pest problem, and it gets solved with a ladder, a flashlight, and carpentry.
How Bats Get In
A bat doesn't need much. Gaps as small as 3/8 of an inch are enough, which is smaller than most homeowners picture when they go looking. On a typical Genesee County house, the openings we find are almost always in the same handful of places:
- Gaps where soffit meets fascia, or where the soffit returns at a corner
- Unscreened or poorly screened ridge vents and gable vents
- Chimney flashing that's pulled loose from the roof, and open chimney flues
- Loose, lifted, or storm-damaged siding, especially at the top course
- Roofline junctions — dormers, valleys, and anywhere two planes meet at an angle
The tricky part is that a house usually has more than one opening. Finding the one you can see from the driveway and calling it a day is how a job fails. We inspect the whole envelope and document every gap before anyone touches a caulk gun.
Bat Proofing Is Carpentry
Once we know where the openings are, the work looks like any other exterior repair. Soffit and fascia get repaired or replaced. Gable and ridge vents get proper screening. Chimneys get capped and reflashed. Ridge-vent details that were never installed right get corrected. Loose siding gets refastened and sealed.
That's a point worth sitting with, because it explains why a lot of homeowners end up calling twice. A spray or a trap doesn't fix a 3/8-inch gap under your fascia. Closing the gap does, and it stays fixed.
One-Way Doors: Letting Bats Out Without Letting Them Back In
You can't just seal a building that bats are living in — they'd be trapped inside, and you'd have a much worse problem in your walls. So the sealing happens in two passes.
First, every opening that isn't in active use gets closed. Then one-way exclusion devices go over the active entry points. A bat can push out through one of these to go feed at dusk, but it can't get back through to come home. After a few nights, the roost empties on its own. Then we pull the devices and close those last openings permanently.
Nothing is trapped, poisoned, or handled. The bats simply leave and find somewhere else to roost, and your house is no longer an option.
Why Timing Matters in Michigan
This is the part reputable operators bring up and less careful ones don't. Bats in Michigan are protected, and from roughly June 1 through August 15, maternity colonies have pups that can't yet fly.
If you seal a building during that window, the adults leave and the pups don't. They die inside your walls. That's inhumane, it's a problem with the state's wildlife rules, and on a purely practical level it leaves you with an odor problem in the structure that's worse than what you started with.
So we schedule exclusion work outside the maternity season. If you call us in early July, we'll tell you exactly that and get you on the calendar for late summer or fall. In the meantime there's usually plenty we can do that doesn't seal anyone in — inspection, documentation, and planning the repairs.
Cleaning Up What's Left Behind
A colony that's been in an attic for a few seasons leaves guano and urine behind, and that does real damage. Insulation gets soiled and stops performing. Moisture works into decking and framing. Drywall stains and sags.
Cleanup and restoration is the second half of the job: remove the soiled insulation, clean the affected area, and re-insulate so the attic works the way it's supposed to again. Where the decking, framing, or drywall has been damaged, we repair it — that's the same work we'd do on any moisture-damaged roof.
Verifying the Exclusion Held
Buildings move, and a season of Michigan freeze-thaw finds any weak spot. We come back and check the work — that the devices came off cleanly, that the seals are holding, and that there's no sign of new activity. That follow-up is part of the job, not an add-on.
What We Do and Don't Do
We want to be straight about this. Proven Construction is a general contractor. Our part of a bat problem is the building side of it: inspection, sealing, exclusion, repair, and restoration. We don't trap or handle wildlife, and we're not a licensed wildlife control operator. If your situation needs one, we'll tell you.
What we're good at is making sure that once they're out, they stay out.
Hearing something in the attic? Take a look at our bat proofing and exclusion service, contact us for a free estimate, or call (810) 956-5766. We'll inspect the house and tell you honestly what it needs and when it should be done.