How To Replace The Fluorescent Starter In A Windhager Bug Zapper

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Fourmilab is surrounded on three sides by farmland. In the summer, bugs are in every single place. Faced with this example, defence in depth is the one possibility: window screens, bats, Odonata on the pond, fly strips on the windows and swatters in each room, and as the last stage of terminal defence, high voltage bug zappers with ultraviolet fluorescent lures. These usually are not elegant gadgets, but they get the job accomplished. The precept could not be easier-flying insects, whose compound eyes see lengthy-wave ultraviolet light that mammalian eyes don't, Zappify official website are attracted by the lure tube, which appears to emit a dim blue mild to people. To succeed in the light, they need to fly between wires electrified with between 4 and eight kilovolts which, when the insect completes the circuit, kill-a-bug. The only downside (at the very least if you aren't a flying insect) is that they don't seem to final very long. After a bit multiple summer season, the bulb both begins to flash on and off like a strobe light or simply refuses to mild at all.



Replacement bulbs are readily obtainable and easy to install, however in my experience, at the least half the time replacing the bulb would not fix the problem. With no mild to draw the insects, Zappify official website a zapper is ineffective, so though its excessive voltage subsystem continues to work completely, most people junk it when changing the bulb would not make it gentle up. I'm means too low-cost to be proud of such a state of affairs, so I decided to open up a failed bug zapper and see what was happening. The supply of the issue proved to be so simple as I anticipated and as simple to treatment, so within the hope of saving somebody else the trouble of figuring it out, I've scribbled these notes on the best way to restore your own bug zappers. These directions pertain to bug zappers made by the Windhager company of Salzburg, Austria, who have a dominant market share in this obscure trade right here in Central Europe.



Obviously, if in case you have a bug zapper made by another company, it is going to look completely different inside and may conceivably use a wholly totally different circuit for the fluorescent lamp. Unless you understand what you're doing and know sufficient electronics to be confident you are not going to do one thing silly, it is best to depart things effectively sufficient alone and get a new bug zapper. Further, we will be disassembling and modifying a system which, when opened up, has exposed connections to probably lethal mains present and intensely unpleasant if not deadly excessive voltage. If you're sufficiently silly or scatterbrained that you're prone to neglect to drag the mains plug earlier than sticking your hand contained in the guts of a bug zapper, it is best to stop studying immediately and choose some safer venture, like making microwave popcorn. First of all, before starting this procedure, make sure you try changing the bulb and see if that fixes the problem.



If it does, you have saved loads of time and, if not, you are going to wish a substitute bulb eventually, so why not have one readily available when the time comes? If a brand new bulb does not do the trick, the issue is nearly definitely a failed fluorescent starter contained in the box, so we'll must open it up. You probably did remember to unplug the zapper earlier than beginning to disassemble it, didn't you? First, take away the bug catcher tray at the underside of the zapper, taking care not to spill dead bugs all over the floor or your work space. Depending on the mannequin, the 2 halves of the physique of the bug zapper are fastened along with four or six screws. On "industrial" fashions, these are 2 mm metric machine screws and nuts, but some "consumer" fashions use infernal "split slot" screws which are supposed to keep you from opening up the gadget. You see, you are a client, so you are expected to eat-purchase, purchase, buy, not mend things which break.