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but it got me to thinking about solar gain in northern climes -- this particular area, being in the "river drainage" off Mount Rainier, gets colder in the winter and hotter in the summer, than most of the rest of western Washington.
we designed our house as a modified passive-solar, with provisions to put in active solar later, so we did a lot of research on that
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so at last my question -- has anyone affixed Mexican ceramic floor tiles (painted matte black) to the front and/or sides and/or roofs of their bat boxes, as additional thermal mass?
and if so, what was the result?
alternatively, has anyone affixed rocks or slate to their bat boxes?
here, we have about an acre in an area of mixed prairie, fir trees, oak trees, Scotch broom-overgrown lots, pastures for dairy cattle, horses, and egg-farms, and houses on fairly large lots; with the Centralia power canal just off our north boundary line, the river about 1/8 mile beyond it, and miscellaneous swampy land in between.
we know we have bats in spring, summer and fall; we can see them, and occasionally I can even hear them if I'm walking out in the yard then -- we also have redtailed hawks, golden eagles, and bald eagles nesting in the trees just to the north of us, along the banks of the canal.
we THINK we might have had bats overwintering for several years in our open-ended large storage building (50 x 60 with the opening to the east), and we are now planning to put a door on that, potentially excluding the bats (we can put a vent in for them, of course, but aren't certain how we can design it to admit bats yet exclude paperwasps and "ground bees"); we also aren't sure if bats would care to stay after we put doors on and a solid floor in (and pursue hobbies during the day, into the evening)
the building faces east, has a garage door on the south side, otherwise plain T1-11 siding everywhere else, is on the north end of the lot with
one big oak to the south, neighbors' trees to east and west, one big fir (with a lot of branches missing due to a huge snow and wind storm a couple of months ago) to the southeast (and it's unheated, has no insulation internally)
would welcome any suggestions -- I've read much of the information on bats and bat-houses available on the internet.
