I have a city sewer in front of my house that has standing water and has become a breeding ground for mosquitoes. Is there anything I can add to the water to negate it as a breeding ground?
- posted
15 years ago
how to rid sewer of mosquitoes?
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- posted
15 years ago
Be careful. Street sewers usually dump to lakes and streams. What you put in them may pollute.
Call your city and ask. If it's standing water, the health department should take interest due to recent outbreaks of West Nile Virus and other mosquito-borne illnesses.
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- posted
15 years ago
usually you can get something free from your city/county to put in there if they are a known problem for your locality.
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- posted
15 years ago
Little bit of dishwashing detergent.
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15 years ago
I take it you are on city water? If you were on a well, it would be easy- whenever you notice mosquitos, just dump enough water in the catch basin there to flush the eggs down the outflow pipe. There shouldn't be standing water, by the way. Most catch boxes I have seen are only a couple cubic feet below the outflow pipe, and aren't really water-tight. They are just for surges, and to give sand and stuff a place to settle out where it can be easily removed, instead of in low spots in the sewer run itself. I'd call city street and health departments and request it be checked out- the thing may just need cleaning.
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15 years ago
Hi, If it is standing water, pour little bit of olive oil to cover the surface.
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15 years ago
some diesel fuel on top will help.
s
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15 years ago
Same problem here, my city sanitarian gave me a card of BT donuts and I hang a few on some string so they stay in the basin and don't wash away.
BT is a bacteria and there is a strain for caterpillars and a strain for mosquito larvae, kills em .
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15 years ago
Have you priced olive oil lately?
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15 years ago
You can also use vegetable oil or mineral oil, both are safe and will smother larvae.
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- posted
15 years ago
DDT.
You can get it if you try hard enough.
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15 years ago
On 6/26/2008 5:54 AM HeyBub spake thus:
Not recommended. There's a good reason it's hard to get.
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15 years ago
As it turns out, that "good reason" is responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands - maybe millions - due to Malaria.
Like breast implants, the world's opinion has changed. WHO now recommends indoor DDT spraying to control mosquitos.
The "environmentalists" may be directly responsible for more deaths and misery than polluters.
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15 years ago
On 6/28/2008 7:00 AM HeyBub spake thus:
They don't recommend it; they allow it, recognizing its extreme environmental dangers. The EU has basically prohibited the use of DDT outright.
Yeah, yeah; heard it all before. Turns out there are other ways to control the spread of malaria than using environmentally-destructive chemicals (pyrethrins, etc.).
By the way, so long as we're on the topic: I've been reading about malaria recently. The life cycle of this disease and the organisms involved (Plasmodium and the Anopheles mosquito) are fascinating and mind-boggling, especially the way the protozoan responsible for the disease (Plasmodium), a one-celled critter, morphs into six or seven completely different forms (some sexual, some asexual) and has the "smarts" to evade the immune systems of two different, much more complex organisms. Amazing stuff.