Behind the siding: the nest, the wire and the bat

Pull a piece of soffit off in August and a yellowjacket nest the size of a basketball comes with it. You are 20 feet up on a ladder when they hit your face.

The points

• The sting does not hurt you. The fall does. People come off ladders swatting, and the ones who are allergic can be in trouble on the ground within minutes.
• The rule says where harmful plants or animals are present, the crew gets told what is there, how to avoid it, and what the first aid is. That is this talk, and it is also the walk-around before the first board comes off.
• Look before you pry. Wasps coming and going from a soffit gap, a J-channel or a corner post mean a nest. Mark it, treat it at dusk or the morning before, and open that section last.
• Wires live behind siding: the service entrance cable, the meter base, the porch light, the outdoor receptacle, and cable stapled to the sheathing. Siding nails and trim screws go into them. Find them, and no fastener longer than the job needs.
• A bat in a soffit or an attic vent is a rabies question. Nobody handles a bat with bare hands, and if a bat touches skin or bites, that is a call to a doctor the same day, not a shrug.

Why it goes wrong

Yellowjackets and paper wasps build in soffits, behind fascia, in corner posts and in the gap behind a J-channel. Bald-faced hornets hang a paper nest under eaves. A nest disturbed by a pry bar sends dozens out at once and they go for the head. On a ladder that is the fall; on a plank it is the person next to you jumping. Anyone with a known sting allergy carries their epinephrine on them, not in the truck, and tells the foreman before the first ladder goes up.

Anaphylaxis is throat swelling, hives spreading, dizziness and trouble breathing within minutes of a sting. Epinephrine in the outer thigh, then 911 with the address, then a second dose if it does not turn around in 5 to 15 minutes. Someone with no known allergy can still react badly to 20 stings at once; a lot of stings is an emergency by itself.

The electrical behind siding is the part nobody sees. The service entrance cable runs down the wall from the weatherhead to the meter, often under the siding, and it is live ahead of the main breaker; cutting into it is an arc flash at the meter base. Porch lights, outdoor receptacles and doorbells are wired through the sheathing. A siding nail into a cable in the wall can sit there for a year and then start a fire. Look at the meter, trace the cable, and stay a full stud bay away from it with the saw.

Gas comes through the wall too. The meter, the line to the grill, the furnace vent, and the dryer vent all come out under the siding. Nothing gets screwed through a wall where a gas line enters, and a smell of gas after a fastener goes in means everybody off the wall and the gas company on the phone.

Bats roost behind shutters, in soffit gaps and in gable vents. Bats can carry rabies, their bite is small enough to miss, and rabies is fatal once symptoms show. Any bat contact with skin is a doctor visit and probably the post-exposure shots. Bat droppings in an attic carry histoplasmosis, a lung infection; a dust mask is not enough for a heavy pile, and disturbing it is a respirator job or a call to a wildlife company.

Snakes under the bottom course, rats in the wall, a raccoon in the soffit, poison ivy up the wall behind the trellis. All of it is under this rule. The walk-around before the tear-off is where you find it, and the crew hears about it before the first pry bar goes in.

Questions for the crew

1. Who on this crew is allergic to stings, and where is their epinephrine right now?
2. Where does the service cable come down this wall, and where are the outdoor lights and outlets?
3. What have you already seen coming and going from this roofline?

To close

Nobody pries a soffit or a corner post today until somebody has watched it for a minute and traced the wires.