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Is Untrasonic Electronic Pest Control, Effective?
tedgyz asks: "I have declared war on the pests in my house. I am tired of hearing the scurrying of mice and squirrels in my walls. Worse - I am tired of the nests littered with droppings buried in boxes in the attic. I have used standard traps, and although successful, it seems that new rodents or more than happy to replace the ones I've killed. Are ultrasonic deterrents effective?"
"I've searched the web, but I can only find marketing material from manufacturers and distributors. I'm looking for cold, hard facts.
- Do ultrasonic deterrents really keep rodents out of your house?
- What is the range?
- Do they last, or do the rodents eventually return?
- Are they truly innocuous to dogs and cats?
- How do you measure success?"
They do work in certain cases -- I have two in my house (kitchen and computer room), and they have stopped my mouse problem.
Rooms with odd geometry or many sound-absorbing obstructions don't work very well. A good rule of thumb is that these will only protect areas an IR remote would reach from the outlet they're plugged into -- in other words, line-of-sight.
One word of advice -- don't go cheap! The cheap ones audibly click, and give sensitive people headaches. The good ones are unnoticable to pets and humans.
As for range, it varies -- but usually only one room per device. See labeling!
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
I used to live on the 2nd floor up in an old building. Some builders came and started ripping apart the basement of the building: pretty soon we had mice running around our flat, scared off from the lower levels.
I bought a pair of Ultrasonic repellers for about £80, or USD$120. At the same time I put some poison down, which certainly thinned the numbers out.
But I think it was the Ultrasonic babies that kept them away; I don't think you can rely on them to rid yourself of the pests, but they are definitely effective at stopping them coming back, or in for the first time.
You have to place them somewhere sensible with line of sight to most of the area you want to cover. This is a bit of a pain, but worth it.
I'd recommend them. But get good ones.
We've seen mice and roaches in our apartment so I bought a small ultrasonic thingie for the kitchen.
The mice appear to have fled the area. We caught a mousie in the front room (glue trap), but we haven't seen any mice in the back of the house. If you can stand finding a dead mouse now and then, I recommend glue traps.
The roaches don't seem to mind the ultrasonic at all.
Surprisingly, Chrysantemum seeds work against roaches. We set some out a while back and the roaches dissapeared. Apparently there are more effective breeds (of seeds, not roaches), so do some research.
My father is a blogger.
It's a known fact that some animals (especially smaller ones) can hear a much wider frequency range than humans can.
"genetically similar" means nothing - A few kilohertz can make a lot of difference.
But one has to be careful not to get TOO close to the human hearing range, as within 3-4 kHz of the human hearing range, it causes US discomfort. A bit above that and it won't cause pain for humans at all, but will sound like an unholy shriek to a small animal.
Note: I'm talking about the ultrasonic-only ones. And having multiple small units scattered around is probably better for our ears than one large super-loud unit, as one superloud unit might still have enough SPL to damage someone's ears even though we can't hear it. (Although it helps that the ear won't have any resonances at those frequencies - This is why smaller animals can hear higher freqs, smaller ear canals = higher resonant freqs.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Do ultrasonic deterrents really keep rodents out
of your house?
No. Not at all. What they do is make the environment less attractive to the rodents. If you are in a duplex, the rodents run next door. If you own your own house, they get used to it (how long did it take you to ignore the traffic/train/plane while you are sleeping?)
What is the range?
See above "no" answer.
Do they last, or do the rodents eventually return?
See above answer.
Are they truly innocuous to dogs and cats?
The mouse chirpers bug the crap out of my dog. On a more important note, they bug the crap out of me. (my wife would say "insert obvioius pest joke here") The mosquito ones are the worst, but I can definitely hear all of the "pest control" ultrasonic gizmos. Maybe I'm just picking up on a weird harmonic, but they're more annoying than the high pitched whine of older TVs, to me.
If TVs and flourescent lights don't bother you, then this won't bother you, but be assured that your pets *will* notice.
How do you measure success?"
Decrease in mouse turds always worked for me.
If you're seriously interested in getting rid of mice, get a cat. Get a female cat (spayed!) from the humane society. Keep it outside if you don't like cats (they like to roam, anyway).
Best rodent control are mousers. Female cats make the best mousers.
Chances are that you could make a pretty decent ultrasonic repeller for a fraction of the price of commercial ones. Look around at some electronics sites, but the basics would be:
555 timer - Set it to free-run somewhere in the 26-30 kHz range. You might have to experiment a bit. It will probably be most effective 1-2 kHz over the highest frequency that causes you discomfort.
Audio amplifier - LM386 audio amps are cheap and easy to use. They're a high-power op-amp for all practical purposes.
The silicon and additional passives would cost you under $10 most likely, which leaves you $20-30 for a speaker with good ultrasonic response and still be a fraction of the price of these $80-120 commerical units people talk about.
Bonus is that you can retune it down a few kHz if you want to intentionally piss someone off. This is more effective if you add circuitry that sweeps the frequency over a few kHz. (This might hold true for animals too.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
...so they won't work on the critters in the walls.
The sound frequency is damped right out of existence upon hitting something, so using them in a space with lots of corners, furniture, or sonic shadows will be fruitless. Though, if you knew they were all entering your house through a certain cleared-out area, it might be worth flooding that space with them. Otherwise, I think it will cost a fortune, have limited success, and, based on other another poster's comment, may give you headaches or brain damage.
Personally, having kids prevented me from putting out too many traps, and chemicals were out of the question.
First of all, you have to get rid of their entry points, clog up their traffic routes in the walls, and trap the ones that start walking through your living room as a result. I live in an old bungalow, and was surprised to find that behind my baseboards, there was enough room to roll a baseball through (just like in the cartoons, they had set up a little world back there).
The most effective thing that worked for me (outside of getting a cat) was to pull up the baseboard molding around a few rooms (especially the kitchen), and fill it with 'expanding foam spray.' The mouse superhighway was gone. I caught a couple with traps, but they never came back. It also made my house a bit less drafty. I filled in any space where I thought they may be able to enter the house, either with foam or ultra-fine steel wool (mice won't try to chew through it).
Low tech, but effective. It cost me about $10 total, compared to $5-$25 for each of the ultrasonic devices.
I can personally attest to this. Something about female cats makes them much less 'social' (in my experience) but much more prone to hunt -- well -- anything. Snakes, lizards, mice, rats, bugs, miniblinds...
My male cats, on the other hand, have been very friendly (almost to the point of being puppy-ish) but can't be bothered to hunt
A poster above mentioned to keep them only slightly fed -- I'm gonna have to disagree with this one. I personally leave 2-3 days' worth of dry food out at all times. They can eat if they want to, or not. I *don't* give them canned food, however -- that's the fastest way to get a fat, finicky (food-wise) cat.
Female cats hunt and kill for the sport of it -- not necessarily to eat (although they like bugs quite a bit). They also have the tendency to bring you home trophies and leave them places that you're most likely to find them (doormats, pillows, shoes).
That's how they show affection...
I have friends who bought a "vacation" home in Death Valley, CA [actually it's just a party house for a bunch of vector ecologists and related people] and it used to be overrun with rodents. Nervous about Hantavirus see here [note also has a few good links to help you out on your quest] they tried one out, one of the middle priced ones I believe, and it works great. One of their neighbors doesn't use one and he gets drowned rats and mice in his toilet all the time. As one of the above posts mentions eliminate the point of entry and you are halfway there.
-- Some days you're the dog; some days you're the hydrant.
No, they don't work on insects (at least, nobody has been able to get them to work in independant testing labs). Apparently, this is due to the fact that mosquitoes are nearly deaf.
You can buy expensive CO2 generator/electrostatic killers; they work to a certain extent. By that I mean they attract mosquitoes, they kill mosquitoes, but they don't kill as many as they attract. Net result: more mosquitoes than you had before.
You can buy bug zappers. They work as well, but apparently there are serious health hazards associated with haveing microscopic bits of blown up insects landing in your food. "Zapper" is an interesting description; but the correct term is more like "vaporizing".
You can use Citronella candles, and citronella bug sprays. They work, but not so well; some lose effectiveness after as little as 15 minutes, some as long as 2 hours.
You can use Avon Skin-so-soft, which works for 15 minutes. Apparently mosquitoes hate slick skin creams of all kinds, so plain-jane lotions work as well and as long.
DEET is the only thing that actually deals with flying insects over a decent period of time. Currently the recommendation is to use no stronger than 30% DEET formulas.
Other, "envoiornmentally friendly" spray/apply lotions work, but for short periods of time. Since most should not be used more than twice a day, that doesn't help if you're really outdoors.
Mosquito coils work because they contain a pesticide. You decide if that's what you want your kids breathing.
Bug jackets work; remember that if the screen touches your skin they can bit through it.
What really works is getting rid of the breeding sites. A single coke can with an inch of rainwater can grow about ten thousand mosquitoes; you have your work cut out for you, but it does make a real difference. If you have a pond, put fish in it. They eat the larvae.
There are about 90 kinds of North American mosquitoes, and they have specific habitat preferences. Thus, in the rain, you get the kind that like humidity and lower temps. At evening, you get the kind that like the sun going down and the temps falling a bit. So, chances are that the kind that give you the reaction will either die off sometime during the season, or you're having consistent weather they like, but getting at the breeding sites is your true best option.
You may well be having an allergic reaction of some kind as well; since allergies are cumulative (ie the reaction doesn't happen until you get some personally significant number of bites, a threshold you may have exceeded). I would use DEET but it's up to you.
I don't know where this came from, but I got it from my parents... Take a five gallon bucket, and cut it down about halfway, and discard the top. Make a ramp out of a piece of wood, such that a mouse could run up it. Cut two notches on opposite sides of the bucket, so that a wire will can lay accross the width of the bucket. Put a pop or beer can on the wire, and coat it with peanut butter. The last step is to fill the trap with antifreeze. The antifreeze will pickle any rodents that happen to jump on in, reducing the frequency of neccasary cleanings.
I tried to draw a diagram, but it was aborted by the lameness filter.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
The coleman is a two part system, one unit is suposed to repell, and the other attracts, hopefully away from the area you're in. Mosquitoes are strongly attracted to bodyheat and carbon dioxide.
mosquites repellants
DEET (insect repellent)
Avon Skin-so-Soft work for some people (works for me for 2 hrs) but not for others
lemony smelling stuff
citronaella, lemon grass, try just sparying the area with plain old lemon juice.
some people swear but oraly takeing garlic and yeast tablets, I think they may have some idiocyncratic body chemistry that makes this work cause it doen't for me.
some people are so attractive to mosquitoes, that nothing helps, my wife is like this, I normaly just stand beside her and never get bite, while she gets eaten alive.
Indiginous, mosquitoes feed around dawn and dusk and only to develope their eggs, the asian tiger mosquitoes are ravenous 24/7 and very difficult to repell.
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