How to Make a DIY Mosquito Trap That Actually Works!

hey y'all so lately we've been getting a ton of rain i mean we got weeks and weeks of rain and then on top of it we got hit with a hurricane or tropical storm and that just brought in so many more inches of rain everything that was already saturated is just that much more saturated and this has opened up a perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes so i was in lowe's the other day and i was walking down one of the aisles and i saw one of the traps that they have there that uses a light and a fan and pushes all the mosquitoes down inside of it but when looking at the box i noticed that it said it covered up to a quarter of an acre and i have a decent amount more acreage than a quarter of an acre so i looked into whether or not they had something bigger which i found online that they do have a larger one now the one at lowe's was seventy dollars the one i found online that was larger was i believe 180 to 190 dollars so let me start getting into that price range i start wondering to myself is this something that i can build myself it really seemed like just a few basic components this is going to be a little bit of a hybrid between what i found in the store and what is called a new jersey light trap and i drew up my master plan here and uh yeah i've got no measurements it looks like a four-year-old drew it but you know that's what i've got to go off of i'm going to start putting all these things together see how they fit together and in a way that makes sense to me anyway so let's go ahead and jump right in and see what i come up with let's go so for the most part all the traps that i've seen have been of a cylindrical shape the new jersey light trap is that way and then also the one that i found in lowe's so it just made the most sense for the structure the shell of this whole thing to use a five gallon bucket now i will not be needing this lid and i'm actually going to turn this whole thing upside down the bottom of this bucket is actually going to be the top of my trap so i will not be needing the handles on this bucket so i can remove those all right so now i need to start focusing on where my holes are going to go around the top of my trap here that is where the mosquitoes are going to be pulled into they're going to come in before being sucked down and they're partially attracted not fully partially attracted by this light fixture this is one of the things i want to talk about that i mentioned earlier that i don't like with the ones you can buy in the store the ones you can buy in the store come with black lights black lights are they're definitely going to pull in a bunch of bugs not necessarily mosquitoes mosquitoes really are not proven to be attracted to black lights but if you look at the new jersey light trap they use a 25 watt incandescent light bulb now this is not going to be super bright but it is going to provide a little bit of heat to help mimic a person so i need to take this light fixture and based on its height and everything figure out where i'm going to make my holes all the way around so just lay that down like that i got the top of my light bulb there i actually want my hole to be just slightly beyond that now i have my measurement of where the light bulb would be inside which just so happens to come out to right at six inches from the very bottom of the outside of the bucket i'm going to make my marks all the way around the bucket so that i know my line to make my holes for all right so next i need to make lines all the way around closer to the top of this and that's where the window is going to be for the mosquitoes to fly into i'm personally going to go with three inches from the bottom of the bucket which is also then three inches from my previous line so there will be a three inch opening all the way around for the mosquitoes to fly into now that i've got my two lines that go all the way around this for my opening to this now i need to make lines going vertically as support so i'll be putting four posts in which means every about eight and a half inches i will have a center of a post so now i need to measure out the width of what i want each of the posts to be i'm going to go with an inch and a half i feel like that would be plenty person i've got all of my postmark now i can start cutting everything out on this first section [Music] all right so now that i've got those windows cut out now i can actually start wiring up my light fixture and again this is just a standard lamp fixture but this one does have a plug-in on it and the reason i went with this one is just because when i mount my fan inside now i can just plug it into this where as i was gonna have to lop off the plug and wire it into these terminals here it's just gonna make it a whole lot easier the other reason i went with this one is because it since it has that plug it has a ground screw in it and the wiring i bought which is for appliances if you can see here on the wiring you'll see there's a green wire for ground black for hot and white for neutral and that's just going to make this all grounded which anytime you can do that that's the best way to do it the whole thing is plastic so i don't know how necessary that would be but again it's always better to put in better things okay so the first thing i need to do in order to start wiring all this up is i need to run my cord through the bucket here so i'm just going to put a hole here in the top of the bucket where i can run my wiring through into the fixture all right so now i've got my hole cut for the wiring i can now feed my wiring into the bucket once i've got enough wiring in there for the light fixture then i'm going to take my fingers and grab right here at the edge of the bucket and then feed it the rest of the way through where my fingers are is marking the amount of wire that i need in the bucket so from here to here for the fixture so here i want to put a knot in this wiring so if anybody comes along and yanks on the wire it doesn't pull it out of the light fixture because if it pulls it out of the light fixture and they yank on it then as long as it's plugged in you have a live wire so now with this not being in place it can't be pulled out of the bucket all right so i'm going to take this fixture and i actually ended up notching out a little area here so that my cord would go through easily and sit flush and now i can start wrapping them around each of the screws so i'm going to start with the green ground wire i'm going to connect it to this green ground screw on the fixture i'm going to wrap it around there in a clockwise direction the idea is going around a clockwise direction as i tighten down this terminal screw on top of it it's going to help pull that wire in close to the center of that screw which is just going to provide a better connection all right so now i'm going to attach the white neutral wire to this silver screw silver is going to be for your white neutral so again same thing going to wrap around in a clockwise direction and then just tighten it down nice and firm i'm going to take this black line wire and put it on this brass colored screw so now i need to center my fixture and once i've got it centered then i need to mark where i want to drill my holes for the bolts that are going to hold this in place now that i've got my marks made i can make my holes now typically when you install a light fixture like this the bolts run up through the light fixture and into a junction box i elected to run them down through the bucket and then through the holes in the light fixture and use nuts to then tighten down the nuts onto the light fixture to pull it up to the top of the trap it's just going to make for also a cleaner look on top and also just makes it really easy to seal in with some caulk all right so now i've got that light fixture mounted up in the trap now it's time for the fan don't need this stand we're not going to need the front grille so i'm going to disassemble some of this and then mount it into the trap i'm going to make sure that i hold on to the bolts that i pull out though because i will probably need them a little bit later to mount them into the trap so now i've got screws going all the way around this fan and i really don't need this front grille in fact it's taking up a little bit of extra space and it just doesn't need to be there so i'm just going to pull all these screws out and remove the front grille all right so now i've got my holes cut that are going to go in that little tab there that's where the stand was connected i'm going to take those same bolts that were connecting the stand to it and we're going to put them in through the bucket and then in through that hole to really mount it in place i'm going to screw that screw through there and you should be able to see the screw coming through that hole in the fan so now i'm just going to do the same on the other side and that thing isn't going anywhere now that fan is in place now i'm going to plug it into the outlet that's on the light fixture all right so now all that is in place now i'm going to put vents all the way around the bottom portion of this bucket kind of like i did up top here they're going to be a little bit narrower and what this is going to allow for is the fan is going to be able to just vent and breathe a little bit better which will make it more efficient and at the same time it can provide some windows so that when i go to remove the basket out of the bottom to get all of the bugs out i can spray in an insecticide to just take care of the rest of the bugs that might still be alive so that when i take that basket off they don't just fly away all right so what i'm going to do now is i'm going to take this outside i'm going to paint the whole thing black and the reason i'm going to do that is because mosquitoes are more attracted to darker colors than they are lighter colors and while this is a navy or royal blue and it's kind of dark i just really want the whole thing to be uniform and it's going to kind of leave it's going to allow for this bucket to stay warm during the day drawing in that heat so in the evening time it may remain a little bit warm kind of mimicking a body and on top of that what it's going to do is it's going to help to protect this bucket from the sun's rays i'm also going to be painting this lid and i'll show you a little bit later what i'm going to do with that all right so now that my paint is all dry now i'm gonna do is i'm gonna put screening all the way around the bottom of this bucket where all these little windows are so that way all the bugs that get trapped they can't get out and i'm gonna do that by using just this standard patio screen that can be picked up pretty much anywhere and i'll just cut one fairly big piece that goes all the way around the inside of the bottom of the bucket covering up all those windows and i will adhere it to the walls of the bucket using some caulk now i can already send some comments that might be coming and they'll probably look something like this that caulking or that screen doesn't look good and no it doesn't i would not want that in my living room at all once i started putting that screen around it was just smashing that caulk all over the place and it's just not a clean look but from the outside i'm really not going to be able to tell and more importantly it's functional and holding that screen in place which is really all that i care about but don't worry i did do my due diligence and i surveyed some of the future residents of this trap and 150 out of 10 mosquitoes all said the same thing and that's that they really didn't care which i found to be very encouraging and i just want to make sure that they're having a good time and relaxing and most importantly sleeping well in their final home this particular lid has the middle that spins out and this is going to be important for the way that i'm going to be installing the bottom portion of my trap so let me mostly focus on the middle portion of the part of this lid that actually spins out i'm actually making a hole or a cut along this little ridge here before it dives down all the way around so that i have a hole right in the middle and it just leaves me with the outer part of that ring that spins out of the bigger ring well i was doing some testing with the fan with just the vents around the bottom portion and it was really bogging down the fan there was not enough airflow so i need some airflow in the very bottom and so what i'm going to do now is i'm going to put some screening all along the inside of this so that the bugs can't fly out once they've been blown down inside and it's also going to create kind of a bowl for them to get blown down into all right so now i've got my bucket lid back now and now i'm going to run a bead of caulk all the way around this little ring right here all right so now i'm going to take the front grille and i'm just going to set it down into that caulk now i'm going to do is i'm going to take some little screws and i'm going to put them down through each of the holes that originally was holding this grill onto the fan and so when this is attached to the bottom of the trap all i have to do in order to take this basket off is just spin this off and obviously gravity will help keep the bugs in the bottom this is upside down and i'll just pull off like this this will remain on the trap all right so now all that's really left as far as building this is figuring out how to hang it now i could just take the handles that i took off and bend the hooks in to where it just hangs underneath of here but i bought some of these eye bolts and i'm going to use some light duty chain and some little hooks just so i can quickly disconnect it from whatever it is i have hanging it from so i'll just quickly install that now all right so now the trap is pretty much completely built so now i'm going to reinsert the 25 watt incandescent bulb and test it out all right so the light is working and now let's turn on the fan and the fan is spinning all right so now that i know all of my components are working now it's all about getting the mosquitoes to it but what's most important is some form of bait or attractant and a lot of the traps that are out there just don't offer this but it's probably like the key ingredient in order to having a successful trap a lot of people know that when you exhale you give off carbon dioxide and that's what a lot of mosquitoes are attracted to this product is called octanol and that is what it is mimicking there are different lures or attractants for different regions of the united states this particular one is great for the northern portion of the united states and into canada the mosquitoes there are more attracted to that carbon dioxide down in the south not the mosquitoes are not attracted to that but some of the breeds of mosquitoes down here in the south are more so attracted to the scent that your skin gives off especially like perspiring skin gives off that strong scent well a lot of mosquitoes down here are actually attracted to that and really only attracted to that so there's this product out that's called a tracta and that's exactly what it's supposed to do it's supposed to mimic the scents that come off of your skin so since i'm in the south i'm going to be using the attractive which is the one that mimics more of your skin scent i'm just going to take that little bag i'm going to lay it down here in the basket and that fan is going to help to blow that smell right out the bottom [Applause] all right so now before i take this aside and put it to the test it's getting pretty dark i'm going to spray all of my screening with an insecticide that i've been using for many years and that's tal star p i treat the perimeter of my house with this stuff and it works phenomenally so the idea is i'm going to spray all of the screening and as those mosquitoes make contact with it they should die off a lot faster so when i go and collect the bowl to get them all out of there they should already be dead all right so we'll check back in one to two days and see what we got all right so i'm just going to grab this whole thing just to see what we got the yellow flies seem to be out in force this morning all right let's see what we got inside all right so as you guys can see lots of bugs in here and this is over a very small time frame i can only imagine how many would be in here after a few more days or even a week now your eyes are going to be drawn to these bigger bugs in here but the smaller ones like all these little dots up in here these are all mosquitoes those are all mosquitoes those are all mosquitoes so the population of mosquitoes in here far outweighs the other bugs that did get sucked into this trap now i did unfortunately get some bugs in here that i was not exactly excited about like there's a beetle here and there's a moth there and there's some other moths around here as well but i did get this wasp right here and there's a couple other wasps over here i think in total there were four or five wasps in the trap and if you look down here this yellow bug that's a yellow fly and i got a decent amount of those in here as well which to me those are as bad as mosquitoes they're awful and good riddance to those if they keep finding themselves in this trap i am super happy about that now it's also catching quite a few mosquitoes in the screening all around the walls of this trap here so it's not just catching them down in the bottom trap it's also catching them in this screening all the way around so i just want to show you guys some real quick results over the small time frame as to what maybe you can expect if you buy one of these in the store or if you build one yourself so i can definitely see how it's going to cut down my mosquito population and hopefully the stinking yellow flies so i'm going to go ahead and clean this up and put it back out there alright guys so i hope that you found this video be interesting this really was a fun project to do and even more fun to see that it's working really well overall couldn't be happier with this it's definitely getting rid of a lot of the bad bugs that i really don't want anymore and i saved a bunch of money i think this ran me around 60 bucks or so whereas in the stores and online i saw it for 180 190 somewhere in there for that bigger one that i would need so again couldn't be happier with this if you have any questions or comments you can leave those down in the comment section down below and i hope to see you in the next one see ya

Channel: How To Home

Views: 143,625

Keywords: How to make a mosquito trap, mosquito trap, Mosquito control, how to build a mosquito trap, Get Rid of Mosquitos, Dynatrap mosquito trap

Id: W3LrFwGWu20

Length: 18min 54sec (1134 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 30 2021