24 May
Electric Bug Killer
The indoor insect killer is the best way of ridding the area around you of insects, especially the flying ones like mosquitoes. The electric bug zapper evaporates any insect from a mosquito to a gnat instantly on contact with a nice, loud, electrical ‘zap’!
However, this is not to say that the hand held bug zapper cannot be used outdoors, as long as it is not raining. It should be treated like any other high voltage electrical equipment. Keep the indoor bug killer dry and definitely do not use it while you are standing in the pool!
Models do vary a lot, but there are really only two kinds of indoor bug zapper: the battery operated bug zapper and the rechargeable electric bug killer. Both models are equally effective at zapping bugs and employ the same methods.
The electric bug zapper looks like a ‘kids’ tennis racquet, but with three layers of ’strings’, which are in fact wires. The innermost grid of wires becomes live at the touch of a button while the other two grids, one on either side, are earths.
When a bug is trapped between the wires of the electric insect zapper, it creates a short, which vaporizes it instantaneously with a loud crack. The hand held insect zapper will zap other insects too, but they just fry rather than just disappear.
I have been using the rechargeable sort for more than five years and am extremely satisfied with the hand held insect zapper. In fact, the electric bug zapper has come a long way over the last few years. A fully charged hand held bug killer is powerful enough to last for a few hundred swipes and will hold it’s charge, if unused, for weeks without any appreciable discharge.
The battery recharge pack will take intensive use for the best part of a year, although its ability to hold a charge for a few weeks slowly diminishes after six or seven months.
The latest indoor insect killer I’ve used has a main on/off switch, a light that comes on when it is live (the brightness of this light also gives an indication of the battery’s strength) and a light that comes on when it is plugged in on recharge.
The instructions say that it should be (re)charged for sixteen hours. I usually put mine on charge over night once or twice every week or two, although the electric insect zapper shows a marked increase in performance with only a couple of hours charging.
The latest model I’ve seen also comes with a powerful beam called a ‘headlamp’. I have found this very useful when out in the garden, but I’m not sure whether it’s meant to attract the flies in the dark so that you can zap them if you’re bored. You know, like an anglerfish.
I’ve used the headlamp on my indoor insect zapper for that reason too, but the light uses a lot of battery power. All in all, the hand held insect zapper is a big asset to any outdoor event. The indoor insect zapper is useful to ‘clean out’ your bedroom before retiring; it’s unequalled for evening mosquitoes and it will clear a lunch table of wasps too.
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