On Fri, 30 Mar 2007 14:23:38 GMT, "Toller" wrote:

I build a bunch of bat houses to put on trees around my cottage. There are
some bats, and I am hoping to encourage more to move in, to keep down the
mosquitos.
Then I found out bats won't live in houses attached to trees; they must be
on metal poles. Fussy creatures, I wonder where they find such things in
the wild.

Well, a friend moving had to get rid of his 35 year old hang glider. I cut
it up into 6 10' poles. They ought to be great to hold the houses.
Now the problem; my "soil" is a little top soil over shale. I will have to
put a hole though 2 feet of shale if these are going to stand up. Driving
rebar into it to keep 4x4s in place is hard enough, this sounds impossible
without some power tool. Any ideas.


Rebar is really too soft to be drilling into rock with.
you really want a 4' hard steel rod sized to
fit inside your pipe, and a helper who's really good with a
sledgehammer.
(And let me tell you, from experience, that holding a drill
while someone else swings a doublejack at it takes an
unfair amount of faith...)

Failing that, you can do it with a one-handed sledge by
yourself, but that's enough like real work that
I'd start looking to rent a pnuematic rock drill,
or just cast the poles into cement-filled tire bases,
and plop them on the surface.

--Goedjn