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Don’t Try This At Home — Why Now?
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Don’t Try This At Home

From the ABC a bit of news from Germany: Man fixing airbed blows up apartment.

This is why they have “Use in a well ventilated area” on the can – the fumes can blow-up your house.

In the US we blow-up houses and apartments by using insect foggers in Galveston and Sacramento. Actually it is more common than you might think.

More foggers does not equal a better job, it equals a higher concentration of the propane gas that is the propellant in insect foggers. They aren’t kidding when they tell you to extinguish pilot lights and unplug the refrigerator and air conditioner. Propane is heavier than air and requires more effort to ventilate an area than the previous propellants used.

4 comments

1 Steve Bates { 07.17.09 at 9:22 pm }

There you go again, Bryan, using that propane language. If you lived in Galveston and had to face the cockroaches there (worse than in Houston, if that’s possible), you might think that blowing up your home was the only solution. Personally, I can live with them, in preference to the multiple dangers of insecticide. (For another opinion, consult Stella.)

I notice in the ABC article about the Galveston home that all the commenters assume that a proliferation of roaches comes from a dirty kitchen and can be combated (ahem) by the stuff you can buy in grocery stores. No, and no. Those people clearly live nowhere near any coast.

2 Bryan { 07.17.09 at 9:43 pm }

To eliminate a roach problem you have to fog a minimum of three times, because the fog only kills the hatched roaches, and their eggs will hatch out. If you aren’t going to commit to three Saturdays, don’t bother with foggers. You also need to circle your house with boric acid to stop them from coming in from outside.

You see them in the kitchen and bathroom because they are coming in through the gaps around the pipes. They also enter through the holes for the electrical system.

Cockroaches don’t magically appear in dirty dishes, no matter what people may think.

3 Steve Bates { 07.18.09 at 8:54 am }

“To eliminate a roach problem you have to fog a minimum of three times, …”

What? you can’t do the job with just (ahem) one big mother fogger?
.-= ´s last blog ..Friday Tail-Or-Two Blogging =-.

4 Bryan { 07.18.09 at 11:22 am }

Funny you should say that, Steve, given that insect foggers are actually similar in principle to the “mother of all bombs”, the MOAB [massive ordinance air burst] weapon, which is essentially vaporizes a significant amount of inflammable liquid and lights it off. In addition to the heat and blast, it removes all of the oxygen from the air in wide area. Of course the same effect can be achieved by slamming an SUV into a gasoline tanker on the Interstate.

The smaller test versions of the weapon are called “Ford Pintos”.