On 9 Jun 2009 03:19:08 GMT, the infamous "DoN. Nichols" scrawled the following:
I'd go with a dark waterborne stain instead, the USF&W alternative suggestion. (Dye, not stain.)
-- The doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only advise his client to plant vines. --FLW
That's true, but it's still often necessary to deal with the skeeters that reach adulthood. See, e.g.,
Chic has been gone for a lot of years. He was same age as my Dad, would be be 95 now if still alive. Probably knew the engineer. I learned to waterski behind Chic's Caddy powered boat. He use to run a boat shop and then went to work for my dad at UC Berkeley. Retired to Clear Lake. Had a house there for all the years I knew him. Good guy.
That is funny because I bought a small $50 one last week and it is hanging in my garage and under it is a few 1000 dead mosquitos and no other insects. It has a UV light in the center and an Octenal attractant under it. My problem is I want to kill millions not thousands.
No!
Neon xfmrs and oil ignition xfmrs have very high output impedance at arc voltages. They may only be able to spark a 1/4" gap but once lit they'll sustain a much larger gap. Think jacob's ladder.
A bugzapper needs a low-Z limited-energy zap as from a charged capacitor.
good luck to you in your quest to build a big bug zapper.
i posted a question about this a year or so ago. i saw a photo in an old book/magazine of an old fashioned "bug whacker", was like a 1 foot long fluorescent tube that straddled a electric motor, both ends of the motor shaft had 2, like 2 foot long stiff wires on em, making an X. they whirled around all night and whipped to death any insects that flew close enough to the light to get hit by the whirling wires (safer than high voltage?). i was wondering about substituting some sort of CO2 dispenser instead of a fluorescent UV light (to attract mosquitoes and not moths. we have very pretty luna moths here sometimes). seemed simpler/cheaper than trying to recreate a (too expensive) "mosquito magnet".
this season i sent away for a one pound container of "Vectobac WDG". i sprayed my "wetland" (swamp). the stuff works but i've got to get into a regular routine of spraying (which i haven't gotten around to doing yet).
b.w.
Those are just baby versions of an orchard airblast sprayer. I've got a couple PTO units for 60 horse tractors. You can get up to 500 hp. engine driven units.
Karl
was just reading the wikipedia article TMT posted a link to. says "carbon dioxide, ammonia, lactic acid, octenol" "warmth, water vapor" are attractants. i'm assuming this is going to sound silly, but, i have a large compost pile about 400 feet from the house, seems to me when i go down there by the compost pile i'm swarmed by mosquitoes. i used to like to think the compost pile exudes a few of the mosquito attractants, carbon dioxide, warmth, ammonia, water vapor. i don't know if it makes lactic acid and octenol but i doubt it. i used to hope having that compost pile down there cooking away would attract/confuse skeeters away from the house, but i've never heard anyone say "build a big compost pile far away from your house" as an aid in controlling mosquitoes.
b.w.
Dragonflies are supposed to eat their weight in mosquitoes every day. They are a lot cleaner than Ed & his bats, too. When I lived further south in Florida, the Dragonflies did a great job on the mosquitoes. When they had done their job, the birds would thin them out.
Harboring dragonflies could get you in a lot of trouble down there. Mosquitoes are Florida's state bird.
-- Ed Huntress
the "Vectobac WDG" i quoted in a subsequent post would kill millions, the hassle though is getting out there in the swamp to spray it, lots of undergrowth to get clothes, body parts snagged on, painful. i do believe it's effective though.
b.w.
I don't know the details of your swamp, but have you tried stocking it with little fish? They love to gobble up mosquito larvae. Just be sure to choose something that doesn't get huge when given the space (ie, no goldfish).
Joe
I have a couple of different bug zappers - a large industrial one, and a couple of small indoors Wally POS. IIRC, they both put out about 300 volts. The trick is to get the spacing of the grid far enough to prevent arcing, yet allow it to arc when something gets between the conductors. As someone else pointed out, a neon Xformer, at a few thousand volts, would waste a lot of energy from corona discharge. I doubt the "lethal" claim though. I make neon stuff for fun, and I've gotten nailed a number of times by the power supplies. Very uncomfortable, but current-limited.
Now the scary thing is when I bombard the newly evacuated tubes - I use a 5 kVA Xformer, at about 15kV, and up to 0.5 Amps. That sucker will drop you for good. When bombarding, keep your free hand in your pocket, and don't even *point* at the work in progress!
Joe
And I thought that was the palmetto bug... --Glenn Lyford
My bat story: When we remodeled, some siding was stripped from the house, leaving very small gaps to access the attic. The bats moved in, but were trapped when we replaced the siding. We got them out & decided to make a proper house for them. Well, it was 11 YEARS before they moved into that house. It took them 2 weeks to move into the attic, but 11 years for the bat house! Either they are very picky or very stupid, or both.
So, they have been using their house & it's newer, larger one for 10 years now & we have a good sized population, judged by the pile of guano beneath the house. But I have never seen a bat coming from that house! I haven't staked it out, but I have looked. Never seen one. Very stealthy.
As for the mosquitoes, it's hard to say, but I like to believe that the bats are doing one hell of a job . Here is one fact though: the bats show up (from their winter quarters) long before mosquito season. So they eat more than just mosquitoes, perhaps other bugs preferentially to mosquitoes.
Bob
Yeah, but when your standing water is the gazillion lakes of Minnesota, control becomes a purely local thing. That hum you hear as darkness falls isn't the local highline! Probably the OP is in a similar area. What I HAVE seen is a unit that generates CO2 using a barbeque tank and zaps the bugs that come calling. I expect in the backwoods that you'd need several to even make a small dent in the local concentrations. In the catalogs of the outdoors suppliers, like Sportsman's Guide, Cheaper Than Dirt, Cabela's and the like.
Stan
Another idea would be to search on the internet and find the color of clothes that mosquitos prefer. And just stretch some cloth sprayed with Permithren or other insecticide over the frame. No high voltage, no screwing around with wiring up a grid, more portable, no extension cord.
Dan
Great! Now how do I build a Dragonfly house? :)
Sometime in the past, someone here gave a link to a bat house that could be made from one 4'x8' sheet of plywood. I thought I had saved it but can't find it now.
My Google-fu didn't find plans for a single sheet of plywood. Can someone find it?
technomaNge
Only when feeding on Northern tourists. Also, they aren't 'harbored', they are 'hangared'.
No, those are placed around 'tourists' that don't know its time to go home.
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