Post date: Sep 6, 2016 5:36:20 PM
The largest flying insects we have here seem to be grasshoppers. The cat has only brought one in the house — so far — so I don’t consider them to be a house problem They eat a lot in the garden, but that is another story.
The other night as I was reading on my laptop, I saw a swarm of about ten very tiny flying spots that seemed to be no bigger than a pin point. Among these was a fly and a mosquito, so I decided to turn on my bug zapper. I got this bug zapper when I first moved to Taos and the new house I rented was infested with flies. It works great against those medium-size insects, but I was leery whether it would work with tiny insects. The body of the insect has to form an electrical path between the electrodes in the zapper. However, almost as soon as I turned on the zapper (which has ultraviolet fluorescent tubes to attract flying insects), I heard the loud electrical spark indicating a death. This went on every minute or so for about ten minutes, then stopped. I rolled over and went to sleep, knowing I would not be bothered by flying insects during the night.The next morning I was still skeptical, so I check the tray under the electrodes. Sure enough it contained tiny dead insects. I can’t be scientific about this, but they seem to be called ‘No-see-ums’.Ceratopogonidae, or biting midges, are a family of small flies (1–4 mm long) in the order Diptera. They are also known as no-see-ums, midgies, sand flies, punkies, and others in North America, and sandflies[1] in Australia. They are closely related to the Chironomidae, Simuliidae (or black flies), and Thaumaleidae.
They are found in almost any aquatic or semiaquatic habitat throughout the world, as well as in mountain areas. Females of most species are adapted to suck blood from some kind of host animal for the purpose of anautogenous reproduction. [Wikipedia] [See also: https://extension.entm.purdue.edu/publichealth/insects/bitingmidge.html
This zapper works by charging a bank of capacitors using a voltage doubler circuit. I'm not sure of the rectified output voltage from the power supply, but the voltage across the wires could easily be 3,000V. It makes a healthy spark when I put a screwdriver across the wires even hours after shutting it off.When I bought the zapper on Amazon, there was a raging discussion about the safety of this device. One reason for doubt was that (at least) one example had the power supply cord wired wrong. (The neutral is not supposed to be switched.)
The other reason is that the device has no bleeder resistor to reduce the charge on the capacitor bank after the power is turned off. This can be a shocking hazard if the grid wires are not shorted (as I did) before disassembling.