Fourmilab is surrounded on three sides by farmland. In the summer time, bugs are all over the place. Faced with this case, defence in depth is the one choice: window screens, bats, Odonata on the pond, fly strips on the windows and swatters in every room, and because the last degree of terminal defence, excessive voltage bug zappers with ultraviolet fluorescent lures. These usually are not elegant devices, but they get the job finished. The principle couldn’t be easier-flying insects, whose compound eyes see lengthy-wave ultraviolet gentle that mammalian eyes don’t, are attracted by the lure tube, which appears to emit a dim blue light to people. To achieve the light, they must fly between wires electrified with between 4 and indoor-outdoor zapper eight kilovolts which, when the insect completes the circuit, kill-a-bug. The one downside (at the least if you aren’t a flying insect) is that they don’t appear to last very long. After a bit of more than one summer time, the bulb both begins to flash on and off like a strobe mild or just refuses to mild in any respect.
Replacement bulbs are readily accessible and simple to install, however in my expertise, not less than half the time changing the bulb would not fix the issue. With no gentle to draw the insects, a zapper is ineffective, so though its high voltage subsystem continues to work perfectly, most people junk it when changing the bulb would not make it gentle up. I’m means too low cost to be happy with such a state of affairs, so I decided to open up a failed bug zapper and see what was happening. The source of the issue proved to be as simple as I anticipated and as simple to remedy, so within the hope of saving any individual else the difficulty of figuring it out, I’ve scribbled these notes on the way to repair your own bug zappers. These directions pertain to bug zappers made by the Windhager firm of Salzburg, Austria, who’ve a dominant market share in this obscure business right here in Central Europe.
Obviously, when you’ve got a bug zapper made by one other company, it’ll look completely different inside and will conceivably use an entirely completely different circuit for the fluorescent lamp. Unless you understand what you are doing and know sufficient electronics to be assured you’re not going to do one thing silly, it’s best to depart things nicely enough alone and get a brand new bug indoor-outdoor zapper. Further, we’re going to be disassembling and modifying a device which, when opened up, has exposed connections to probably lethal mains present and intensely unpleasant if not deadly high voltage. In case you are sufficiently stupid or scatterbrained that you are more likely to forget to pull the mains plug before sticking your hand inside the guts of a bug zapper, Zap Zone Defender you should cease studying instantly and select some safer venture, like making microwave popcorn. Initially, before starting this procedure, make sure you strive changing the bulb and see if that fixes the problem.
If it does, you have saved a whole lot of time and, if not, you’re going to need a replacement bulb eventually, so why not have one available when the time comes? If a brand new bulb would not do the trick, the problem is almost certainly a failed fluorescent starter inside the field, so we’ll must open it up. You did remember to unplug the zapper earlier than beginning to disassemble it, didn’t you? First, take away the bug catcher tray at the underside of the zapper, taking care to not spill lifeless bugs everywhere in the flooring or Zap Zone Defender Testimonial your work area. Depending on the model, the two halves of the physique of the bug zapper are fastened together with 4 or six screws. On “industrial” fashions, these are 2 mm metric machine screws and nuts, however some “consumer” models use infernal “split slot” screws which are intended to keep you from opening up the gadget. You see, you’re a shopper, so you’re expected to devour-buy, buy, buy, not mend things which break.