[TriEmbed] Hardware "Debugging"

[Jon Wolfe]

My grandmother used to get out in the yard with the tea kettle too. I'm not sure if they are fire ants or not. I actually had a hard time figuring out thier source, there were no visible mounds nearby, and they didn't have a defined trail leading anywhere.

I put bait at the base of the unit, I dont like chemicals either and I usually let the bugs in my yard be, unless they're the biting kind or those monster Southern roaches.

<div>-------- Original message --------</div><div>From: John Vaughters via TriEmbed <triembed at triembed.org> </div><div>Date:06/26/2015  9:11 AM  (GMT-05:00) </div><div>To: TriEmbed Discussion <triembed at triembed.org> </div><div>Subject: Re: [TriEmbed] Hardware "Debugging" </div><div>
</div>Living in Florida, possibly the fire ant capital, for 30 years, I have tried many things to rid these vile creatures. chemicals work, but are generally temporary. My grandma told me to use boiling water and I thought newer technology had to be better, but I finally decided to try it. Here is what will amaze you. If you have never seen the youtube vidoes of people casting aluminum ant farms, look it up.

In any case, the idea is to inundate the nest quickly to kill the queen(s). To do this, you need large amounts of water. Back to the casting video, these nests can be 10 feet deep or more. Find every pot in the house, fill it with water and find a burner to put it on. Use the gas grill if you have one. You will be amazed where all the water is going once you start pouring it down the ant holes. I personally use the giant pasta/lobster boilers. Be sure to scout out all the mounds and hit them all at once. If I remember right, fire ants have multiple queens, which is why they spread so fast. Nasty little buggers.

I have done this several times and it works far better than any chemicals if done right. There will be continued activity for a little while, but if you got the queen(s), they are done. You could wait for them to rebuild an hit them again if necessary. It's been years since I wiped them out, but if any pile shows up they are dealt with immediately.  I like this method, becasue I am a chemiphobic and for good reason. After working in factories for many years and reading the MSDS sheets, you learn to respect the chemicals. 

Now since this is a Robotics forum, I will add the idea of the ant assassin. A tiny robot that seeks out and kills the queens. Any takers?

 Discalimer: I only wage war on fire ants, no other ants are bothered unless they invade the house.

John Vaughters




On Thursday, June 25, 2015 11:17 PM, Jon Wolfe via TriEmbed <triembed at triembed.org> wrote:


They struck again!
http://www.bytecruft.com/2015/06/re-debugging-my-hvac.html
Every time you read about some pest causing millions in damages it's always been a little hard to grasp for me. On an individual level, bugs just seem like a minor annoyance/fact of life in The South. Had I been someone afraid to open up my HVAC, they would have cost me several hundreds of dollars over the past month.
 
On 2015-06-05 00:34, Jon Wolfe wrote:
 
I had an interesting discovery fixing my air conditioning this week, and wrote a story about it:
 
http://www.bytecruft.com/2015/06/debugging-my-hvac-system.html
 
 
 
-- 
Jon Wolfe
Anibit Technology LLC.

https://anibit.com
 
-- 
Jon Wolfe
Anibit Technology LLC.

https://anibit.com

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