Here are two links. More discussion to follow:
http://www.beyondpesticides.org/mosquito/documents/mosq_traps.PDF
http://www.cheapism.com/indoor-mosquito-traps
Every authoritative source says the first thing to do wrt mosquitos is to eliminate the breeding ground if possible. I have been unable to find any standing water on my property. It's interesting and suggestive that the mosquito problem arose when my sprinklers were being installed. But all the new water drains within an hour of application, leaving no standing water on the ground. This is not fast draining soil, but water on the surface doesn't stay long, though the ground itself can stay muddy for awhile. If it's just mud that mosquitoes can breed in, well perhaps I do have that, but there's nothing I can do about it except leave all my grass and plants to die. Perhaps there is standing water on a nearby lot but it might be hard for me to find.
Though it's not clear where the two or three mosquito bites I've gotten in the past two weeks happened, and it's possible I got them while being outside late at night watering, it also seems quite possible it has been from one or just a few mosquitos that somehow got into my house. I've been hearing one in bed and when brushing my teeth for the last week. They may have gotten in when opening the back door, or perhaps the garage door. I did make the mistake last weekend of leaving the garage door open from about 7pm to 2am.
Those mosquitoes are quite annoying. I've sometimes run my Lenco sonic repeller (a device which was forced off the market by lawsuit because of unproven effectiveness) and it often seems it keeps them away from the immediate area. The batteries ran down a few days ago, so I haven't run it for the last few nights. I may have gotten my most recent bite then. Also, on the "dragonfly" setting it makes a noise which makes it impossible to hear mosquitoes, which at least helps in getting to sleep. I've never been sorry I bought it, other than that it might have prevented me from getting something more or actually effective. I have always thought it wouldn't protect you from a bunch of mosquitoes but it might protect you from just one or two.
Anyway, with just one or two mosquitoes in the house it makes great sense to me that I should have a mosquito trap inside the house. It would probably cut down on the bites and almost certainly the in-house distraction. So I researched indoor traps today.
To me the most obvious idea would be to have a trap emitting small puffs of CO2, just as humans do. There are many outdoor traps that do this, usually by catalytically reacting a tank of fuel such as propane. And there are others that use actual tanks of CO2.
But I could find no indoor mosquito traps that emit plausibly effective amounts of CO2. You wouldn't want to burn (or even just "react") propane inside the house, for a number of reasons, including that it would be illegal. But with sufficient safety measures, or simply a small cartridge of CO2, it seems to me like there could be indoor traps that emit CO2 from a small CO2 supply. They could also generate it with some reaction, such as with baking soda and a granulated acid that reacts over time. But I could not find any that did anything like that. Typically, they simply attract mosquitos with fluorescent light tubes (often UV) and a fan which sucks nearby mosquitos in.
Instead, there are some traps which claim to emit CO2 not from any chemicals supplied, but simply by having an inner surface coated with TiO2. Many reviewers on Amazon.com say they can't believe it works. I thought about it for awhile and decided the TiO2 could be reacting VOC's in the air itself, which come from manmade sources (cars, painted surfaces, etc) and natural sources like trees and flowers, and cracking and oxidizing them on the TiO2 catalyst to make CO2. That could work, but it's hard to see how you wound generate more than the tiniest amounts of CO2, such as in the parts per billion or even parts per trillion using such a process, and such quantities would be totally masked by the 390PPM of CO2 in ordinary air (which is probably somewhat higher than that inside an occupied house).
Anyway, even if these traps don't generate significant CO2, they still do attract flying insects including mosquitos with light, often UV light, and a fan sucks them in.
I'm referring specifically to the Dynatrap, such as the Indoor/Outdoor model the DT1000, which I read about on many websites. I saw it even won some design award given to it in Germany. And it gets more positive reviews than the cheaper traps that only use light and fan. So however effective the CO2 generation is, perhaps the other parts are designed pretty well. I finally decided I would get something like that because I couldn't find an indoor trap emitting larger more useful amounts of CO2.
I finally decided to get the Dynatrap 3 sold by Frontgate. I couldn't find it anywhere else, it looked like a custom more attractive-than-usual version of the DT1000 with a more specially made UV light. Frontgate has been selling mosquito traps since I first heard about them (in fact, I first read about them in a Frontgate catalog) and it looked like Frontgate may have gotten the lead on the manufacturer's latest generation, or a slightly upgraded model. I've always enjoyed items I've bought from Frontgate, often they have actually been exceptional values worth the added cost many times over. It cost about $34 more than the Dynatrap DT1000 from other websites, and that cost did not seem like that much more to me to get something slightly nicer and give Frontgate some of my business again.
http://www.beyondpesticides.org/mosquito/documents/mosq_traps.PDF
http://www.cheapism.com/indoor-mosquito-traps
Every authoritative source says the first thing to do wrt mosquitos is to eliminate the breeding ground if possible. I have been unable to find any standing water on my property. It's interesting and suggestive that the mosquito problem arose when my sprinklers were being installed. But all the new water drains within an hour of application, leaving no standing water on the ground. This is not fast draining soil, but water on the surface doesn't stay long, though the ground itself can stay muddy for awhile. If it's just mud that mosquitoes can breed in, well perhaps I do have that, but there's nothing I can do about it except leave all my grass and plants to die. Perhaps there is standing water on a nearby lot but it might be hard for me to find.
Though it's not clear where the two or three mosquito bites I've gotten in the past two weeks happened, and it's possible I got them while being outside late at night watering, it also seems quite possible it has been from one or just a few mosquitos that somehow got into my house. I've been hearing one in bed and when brushing my teeth for the last week. They may have gotten in when opening the back door, or perhaps the garage door. I did make the mistake last weekend of leaving the garage door open from about 7pm to 2am.
Those mosquitoes are quite annoying. I've sometimes run my Lenco sonic repeller (a device which was forced off the market by lawsuit because of unproven effectiveness) and it often seems it keeps them away from the immediate area. The batteries ran down a few days ago, so I haven't run it for the last few nights. I may have gotten my most recent bite then. Also, on the "dragonfly" setting it makes a noise which makes it impossible to hear mosquitoes, which at least helps in getting to sleep. I've never been sorry I bought it, other than that it might have prevented me from getting something more or actually effective. I have always thought it wouldn't protect you from a bunch of mosquitoes but it might protect you from just one or two.
Anyway, with just one or two mosquitoes in the house it makes great sense to me that I should have a mosquito trap inside the house. It would probably cut down on the bites and almost certainly the in-house distraction. So I researched indoor traps today.
To me the most obvious idea would be to have a trap emitting small puffs of CO2, just as humans do. There are many outdoor traps that do this, usually by catalytically reacting a tank of fuel such as propane. And there are others that use actual tanks of CO2.
But I could find no indoor mosquito traps that emit plausibly effective amounts of CO2. You wouldn't want to burn (or even just "react") propane inside the house, for a number of reasons, including that it would be illegal. But with sufficient safety measures, or simply a small cartridge of CO2, it seems to me like there could be indoor traps that emit CO2 from a small CO2 supply. They could also generate it with some reaction, such as with baking soda and a granulated acid that reacts over time. But I could not find any that did anything like that. Typically, they simply attract mosquitos with fluorescent light tubes (often UV) and a fan which sucks nearby mosquitos in.
Instead, there are some traps which claim to emit CO2 not from any chemicals supplied, but simply by having an inner surface coated with TiO2. Many reviewers on Amazon.com say they can't believe it works. I thought about it for awhile and decided the TiO2 could be reacting VOC's in the air itself, which come from manmade sources (cars, painted surfaces, etc) and natural sources like trees and flowers, and cracking and oxidizing them on the TiO2 catalyst to make CO2. That could work, but it's hard to see how you wound generate more than the tiniest amounts of CO2, such as in the parts per billion or even parts per trillion using such a process, and such quantities would be totally masked by the 390PPM of CO2 in ordinary air (which is probably somewhat higher than that inside an occupied house).
Anyway, even if these traps don't generate significant CO2, they still do attract flying insects including mosquitos with light, often UV light, and a fan sucks them in.
I'm referring specifically to the Dynatrap, such as the Indoor/Outdoor model the DT1000, which I read about on many websites. I saw it even won some design award given to it in Germany. And it gets more positive reviews than the cheaper traps that only use light and fan. So however effective the CO2 generation is, perhaps the other parts are designed pretty well. I finally decided I would get something like that because I couldn't find an indoor trap emitting larger more useful amounts of CO2.
I finally decided to get the Dynatrap 3 sold by Frontgate. I couldn't find it anywhere else, it looked like a custom more attractive-than-usual version of the DT1000 with a more specially made UV light. Frontgate has been selling mosquito traps since I first heard about them (in fact, I first read about them in a Frontgate catalog) and it looked like Frontgate may have gotten the lead on the manufacturer's latest generation, or a slightly upgraded model. I've always enjoyed items I've bought from Frontgate, often they have actually been exceptional values worth the added cost many times over. It cost about $34 more than the Dynatrap DT1000 from other websites, and that cost did not seem like that much more to me to get something slightly nicer and give Frontgate some of my business again.
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