Captain Hardy Smith House

The Captain Hardy Smith House is located in Dublin, Georgia. It is the oldest home in Dublin on its original location. Built in 1873 it is located at 307 West Gaines Street in Downtown Dublin.

The restoration of the home included searching for mature pine suitable for cutting the large barge boards with no knots. The ones used came from the Altamaha Swamp around Hindsville, Georgia.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

BATS!

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Brown Bats can be a real pest when you have a home. Especially when there are hundreds. In the attic they had made a home due to years of no one living in the home. Upon first going to the attic there was a lot of noise and few showed up in the light.


Taking a camera view before cutting through one of the window dormers imagine the shock of seeing this!

Like the movie Ben which was a movie about a boy with Rats, these critters were crawling all over the attic.

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So what does it look like when so many bats have made a home in a house? Click the video below.


What is worse than having bats in your house? The bat poop! This stuff is deadly and besides the threat of rabies the bateria in thier droppings can kill you. The stuff was several inches thick in four of the window dormer areas.


Here is a shot of one of the window dormer areas.

So how do you clean up bat poop? You get head to toe with a mask to protect yourself. This was one of the hardest jobs in working to restore the home. Hot and sweaty and bats sticking thier heads out to check out what you are doing.

After the job is done the results are shown below.

So how many pounds of bat poop came out of the Hardy Smith House? Would you believe over 200 pounds? That's right and there are over 200 pounds of the finest fertilizer you can have bagged and ready to be put in the yard when new grass is to be planted. See below for the final step of dealing with our little friends.
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Now what could possibly be the rest of the story? How did the bats leave the House? Well, the only thing that will get rid of bats is to plug the holes. Bats can squezz through the smallest of spaces.
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You can try moth balls....they love the smell.....Ammonia...they just wait for the disappation of the fumes......even spray that gets rid of rodents.....are you kidding..... don't waste your money plug the holes.
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Spray foam is what finally did it....blocked the holes....bye bye bats :)



A perfectly preserved bat was found in the bat poop. Every detail down to little bones in the feet can be seen.



Now what about all the bat poop? Best fertilizer in the world going for $3 lb on ebay. Approx. 225 pounds of Hardy Smith Bat poop went into the yard!







4 comments:

  1. John,
    What a crappy job! Glad it was you and not me. Thank you for caring about the Hardy Smith house.
    Scott

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  2. Sure glad you got it cleaned up before I arrived!..Well of course there are a few stragglers that want to play cat and mouse and like to creep me out at 3 in the morning while I am sleeping. My screams alone probably scared them away. Good..They can go live somewhere else. Good posting John. I like you in your 'Bat Suit' with Max looking out for you :)

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  3. Great Video. Glad I did not see that many when I moved in!

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  4. Eew, eew, eew. Bugs are what really grosses me out but bats are not high on my list. Actually I like to watch them come out of caves, their little furry faces are kinda cute and they eat all kinds of pesky bugs, I think...but rabies (and lord knows what other diseases) and poop in the house...no thanks. Glad you got rid of them. House is gorgeous...love the before and after shots. It's amazing what a little (OK, a lot) of hard work can accomplish, huh?

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