House of Bats

[Razzinno]

House of bats: A Uhrichsville man’s dream of owning a house soon turned into a nightmare

Uhrichsville, Ohio from The Times Reporter

UHRICHSVILLE – Buying your first house can be a stressful endeavor. For Derrick Castello of Uhrichsville, it has driven him batty.

Soon after buying the N. Water St. Ext. property in February, Castello, 25, found 300 to 500 bats living in the attic of his new house.

Castello said he first found evidence of the small brown bats when he was replacing wall outlets on the second floor of the house. When he pulled the first outlet from the wall, bat guano (bat solid waste) poured out of the wall onto his feet.

Because the attic was sealed, he had to cut a hole to access the area to find the source of the guano. There he found hundreds of eyes staring back at him from the rafters. In some places the rafters had 6 inches of guano and bat urine buildup, and the floor of the attic held almost 4 inches of waste buildup. The house now has a strong smell of ammonia from the guano.

He said that when looking at the house before and shortly after the purchase, he was there during the day, and he never heard the bats scratching or making noise.

Jeff Levengood of Sulzener Home Inspections of New Philadelphia inspected the house before Castello bought it.

Levengood said he didn’t remember hearing noises during the inspection, adding that he didn’t inspect the attic because it was sealed off.

“We aren’t allowed to take things apart to inspect them,” he said. “We like to look at attics any chance we can, but we don’t do destructive inspections.”

When there is a part of the house that is inaccessible, Levengood said, he makes sure he explains to potential buyers that he can’t guarantee that there aren’t problems in the hidden areas.

“One of the last things I do after going through the paperwork is ask if they want to ask me any questions, or if there’s anything they want me to look at,” he said. “He (Castello) had the option to not buy the house knowing the attic wasn’t inspected.”

Jan McInturf of McInturf Realty at New Philadelphia, through whom Castello bought the house from its previous owner, declined to comment.

Since Castello found the first pile of evidence, he has removed hundreds of pounds of guano that had built up inside the walls.

He peeled paint off the second-floor ceiling to find it covered with dark brown and yellow stains.

To make things worse, after he cut the hole into the attic, bats made their way down into the main part of the house and were unable to find their way back to the attic. Now there are dozens of dead bats lying on most surfaces throughout the house.

After weighing his options, Castello had an appraisal done to find out how much it would cost him to rid the house of bats and repair the damage they have caused.

“The total is $29,095. I paid $34,500 for this house,” he wrote in a e-mail. “I do not make a lot of money yet in my young career, and I obviously have no way of paying for this damage that I wasn’t aware of when I purchased the home.”

He contacted a lawyer, who told him there wasn’t much that could be done unless the seller provided a statement or a third party would testify and say the seller knew of the problem before selling the house.

Castello is afraid of taking the case to court, fearing it would cost too much and he might not win.

Castello has talked to representatives from the Department of Natural Resources and other animal groups to find ways to rid the house of the bats, but nothing has worked so far. He even waited until the bats left the attic at night and sealed the hole they came out of, but the bats still found a way into the attic.

However, with the change of seasons, the bats seem to have disappeared. Castello doesn’t know whether they have made their way into the wall.

The damage the bats have caused has made the house unlivable, forcing Castello to stay at his mother’s house.

“The house is uninhabitable at this point and I can’t even work on it because of the risk of inhaling the bats’ guano,” he wrote. “The guano is harmful to breathe in and presents a health hazard to anyone who is around it. ... I am stuck making payments to a house I can’t even go near.

“I am still searching for aid from anywhere possible but have come up empty.”
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*Ironically, I read this after watching Alfred Hitchcock's movie, "The Birds" on HD Net.

[ElChevelle]

"They say thay have bats in their belfry!"

[Twilightseer]

Problem solved

[P$ycHo™]

Originally posted by Twilightseer
[Image]

Problem solved

the poor poor bats...

[watadoo]

guano is damn fine fertilizer. Bag it up and sell it.

[k_rock923]

Where can you find a house for $34,500??

[skryingbreath]

rural areas for one, projects and third world countries.

[Rocker]

i'm sure all bat infested houses are gonna be cheap.