Faulty Chimney Cap Installation
Bats Getting Through Chimney Caps
On August 28, 2006 we received a call about a bat in a house in Brighton Mass. I responded and after conducting an inspection I determined that the bat must have fallen down the chimney. Looking up at the chimney I could see that it had a brand new chimney cap installed. The homeowner informed me that she just had the cap installed about 30 days prior. This was a 3-story house and access to the chimney from the roof was difficult. When I finally got up on the roof I found that the chimney cap was not installed correctly. In fact, the installation was terrible. The chimney cap was obviously about 6-8 inches too small for the chimney. This is lousy, dishonest work. The technician must have thought that because the chimney was so high and so difficult to access from the roof that the homeowner would never see it. The large gaps on either side of the chimney cap allowed a colony of bats to move in to this chimney. We removed the bats and installed some temporary screening to keep the bats out until another chimney company could come out to do the job correctly. This job illustrates the fact that bats can in fact get through chimney caps if they are not installed correctly.
This next chimney was installed correctly but the cement on one side of the cap fell apart leaving a small gap between the flange of the cap and the crown of the chimney. The black rectangles in the pictures below show a single piece of bat guano underneath the chimney cap. In the picture with the pliers you can see the gap between the cap and the top of the chimney. A bat was able to squeeze through this gap (as the guano shows us) and fell down the chimney. The bat then squeezed by the damper in the fireplace and flew around the house frantically at 2am. We caught the bat, made repairs to the chimney and also bat-proofed the entire house to prevent the bats from getting in elsewhere.
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