Keep the Birds Out of Your House!

Birds live in nests, right?

Well, not always...

At today's project, the birds had made their way into the walls of a client's sunroom. They seemed to have moved on for now, so it was time to do some repairs.

The exterior walls of the sunroom were covered in 8" cedar bevelled lap siding. It's just like the wood siding that you find on older homes, except that it's cedar and doesn't have to be painted. One drawback with cedar is that the boards can be somewhat brittle, meaning that they may split over time, and birds can dig their way through knot holes and make a home in the walls.

I started loosening the nails and removing siding when I saw into one of the nests and found that the animals had worn much of the insulation off of an electrical wire that supplies the outlets in the sunroom. There were bare wires showing! It's amazing that no birds got killed and the wire didn't short out... or worse!

Now my day of siding repair included some electrical repairs as I fished a new wire through the walls to replace the damaged one.

This is a prime example of why birds should stick to nests... :)

-Peter

www.CarpentryGuy.com