Folks, as I am writing this I’m in the stands of a jiu-jitsu tournament in Kissimmee, Florida, waiting for it to start. My two nieces and sister-in-law flew in from Manila, Philippines, for the young ladies to compete. Of course, we also had to visit the Disney World parks on some of the hottest days of tghe year.
When we took them to the parks, it was 93 to 95 degrees. With the humidity and what have you, the “feels like temperature” according to weather.com ranged from 103 to 110. It was unreal.
It was scorching hot at the Animal Kingdom at 3:03 p.m on 7/22/2023. Whew!!!
I grew up in Michigan. I’m used to occasional 90° days and what have you but we were at the Disney parks and the heat was something else. Before we went, I talked to some colleagues who worked in Fort Myers, Florida, and they recommended cooling towels and handheld portable misting fans.
This was good news to me because years ago we did something very similar and still had the towels. We donated the misting fans we bought way back when several years ago. They worked but they went through the batteries and water pretty fast.
This is a newer generation charger from the one I had bought years ago. The only difference that I could tell was that if you wanted to recharge it with a cable it had a slot for USBC other than that everything else that I liked about the old charger was the same. We use this 3 days straight in parks and those solar panels are big enough to actually work. The little charger should just have one solar panel on top of the battery pack really don’t make a difference. This design with four exposed panels actually can recharge the charger. Whenever we stopped I would open it up and let it top off even though it has a huge battery pack. I used my old one all over the place on trips, hiking, power outages, you name it.
Folks, these three things were a godsend. I kid you not. We kept the cooling towels wet and would occasionally swing them through the air to cool them off and put them back on our necks. The misting fans were running almost non-stop. We had three of them and I really wish I had bought four or even five so each person could have one versus handing them around but we may do with what we had.
By the way, a misting fan works by letting a little water out that becomes a mist and as the mist evaporates it cools off the surrounding air before it hits you. The model we used has three speeds of fan and you can turn the water on or off.
These fans are the second generation from the vendor that sold me the old ones period they have rechargeable batteries via USB-C slot, a larger water reservoir in the top clear plastic and they worked great.
The fans can fold if you need them to be shorter for some reason and you can see the USB slot. The little hand strap is included and we chose to install them given we were going to be walking around the parks.
Refilling is easily done by removing the little rubber plug and putting it under a faucet, drinking fountain or using the little supplied spare water bottle. The little spare bottle is good for one refill and we did use them multiple times when we were waiting in long lines or whatever and notice we had run out of water in a fan.
The fans came with little extra bottles to refill the fans and we would fill both the bottles and the fans as needed at drinking fountains, bathrooms, Etc. They made very efficient use of their batteries and their water – I was actually surprised. The fans ran a great deal maybe at least 4-6 hours and the batteries didn’t need charging. I can’t say how long they would last bu tthey didn’t let us down.
We’ve used the Frogg Togg brand of cooling towels for a number of years. We bought three more so everyone would have one. Basically they are like a man-made Chamois cloth that you get wet under a faucet or whatever. When you twirl it in the air for a few seconds, some of the water evaporates and it cools off the towel. You then put the towel around your neck and it cools you down. When it gets dry, you get it wet again. Dipping it in ice water is an even faster way to cool off.
Summary
If you are reading this and are going to a hot area where you need to cool off but I can’t recommend them enough. Going to the Orlando,Florida, Disney parks at the end of July in such hot weather would have been absolutely brutal without them.
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No, this is not a scam post or me trying to sell you something – I don’t make any money at all from what I am going to tell you in this post. I normally write about firearms, DIY or tools and am not going to do some huge post about this. My goal is to try and help folks.
The cost of prescription medicine, especially to the uninsured or people with poor prescription drug coverage, has been unholy for years. It has forced people and families to forego medicine because they couldn’t afford it. Finally, I can tell you to check something out that might help – GoodRX.
I first heard about GoodRX from my daughter who works in a clinic where they tell their patients about it all the time. My daughter has seen prescription drug prices drop dramatically through the use of GoodRX – some of the examples she told me were huge — from $500 to $50. $90 to $17. In my personal case, from $42 to $23 at our local CVS.
GoodRX basically does this by acting like a coupon service – you still use the stores you know and trust.
I did some searching before I used them the first time and they are legit and one reason you may never of heard of them is that some pharmacies and groups tell their employees that they can not tell patients/customers about GoodRX.
You can go to http://www.goodrx.com or you can go to your Apple App Store or Android Play Store and download the app for your phone. I have a Samsung smart phone running Android and their app works great. Your doctor may even have GoodRX business cards they can give you if you want to go that route.
With the app you can search on the medicine and it will show you all of the local pharmarcies and their prices so you can then select who to go to. If your pharmacy isn’t listed, call your pharmacy and see if they participate in GoodRX. If they don’t, you may want to change once you see how much you can save.
When you go to check out, tell them you have GoodRX and they will look at your phone or printed page to get the BIN, PCN and Group info to get you the discount.
I hope this helps. If you have questions, they have more information on their website or call them at 1-855-442-9965. This is not an area I know about and just want to try and help folks save some money given my experience.
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A reader dropped me an email and asked if I am doing anything new this year for mosquitoes as he read my past posts. I’m still very happy with the effectiveness of the Talstar insecticide plus the combination of the Ryobi 120350 Power Washer and 10-gallon tank strapped to a dolly continues to work fantastic.
I hope everyone has a great summer and be sure to nuke the bugs before they get to you 🙂
5/21/23 Update – still using the same set up. Everything is working great, Power washer is holding up just fine by the looks of it. I just did my first spray of the season last Monday.
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For whatever reason, maybe the really wet Spring, the mosquitoes have been horrible this year. For the first month or two of the season I was trying to use my M4 sprayer to apply the Talstar P Pro insecticide to combat them but they were still coming. Seriously, in the past the M4 sprayer and Talstar were a powerful combo and all but eliminated the damn mosquitoes but not this year. We did not have any standing water and they seemed to be coming from all of the vegetation that I could not reach with the M4’s relatively small spray pattern and reach. I needed to up my game.
The My 4 Sons M4 sprayer had worked well but it could not reach out far enough and with enough droplets to be effective this year. I still use the unit for smaller areas but it is now largely replace by the unit I’ll tell you about in this post.
My First Choice: Get a Tomahawk Fogger
My first thought was to get one of the big Tomahawk backpack foggers. Those things are amazing and can project an atomized fog of Talstar 40 feet horizontally and 25 feet vertically. It’s really wicked and my buddy John has one that he bought off Amazon. He uses it on his property and loves it. I looked at it and the unit is remarkably well made.
There was only one thing that stopped me – the weight. It’s 38 pounds empty. The tank can hold 3.7 gallons of mixed Talstar and water at about 8.3 pounds per gallon, which comes to 30.7 pounds. Add the two together and you get 68 pounds. I knew there was no way my back would be able to handle that load. John’s in way better shape than me and admits it is a heavy load.
So, even though it works amazingly well, I had to pass on it due to the weight. I find I have to think about these things as I get older. In case you want to get one, here’s the listing on Amazon:
Needed to Find Another Solution
I started researching other sprayers and foggers and ran into an unanticipated problem. It turns out that tons of businesses and people are buying these foggers to apply disinfectants to sanitize surfaces in response to COVID-19. Either units weren’t available or the prices were jacked up – mostly they just weren’t available and I bet part of that is disruptions in the supply chain causing supply shortages as well.
Crap.
The Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Solution
The solution came from a surprising angle. I knew I needed a long reach and particles that could drift around. Literally, I woke up thinking of what might just work – have you ever used a power washer? They are essentially kicking out water under a ton of pressure using a tip at the end of the wand that adjusts the pattern. Therein was the idea. I need a something with pressure, was portable and would not cost a fortune and then luck entered the door.
This is the Ryobi RY120350 cleaner. The tip has three settings and I find 15 degrees to be best. The siphon hose has a quick connect that makes storing the unit easier. The One+ 18 volt battery is protected by a gasket sealed cover that snaps in place. I find I can almost spray 10 gallons before I need to swap batteries with a 4 AH battery. It can hold both the 6 and 9 AH batteries and they can do all 10 gallons.
At the beginning of the summer Home Depot and Ryobi announced the RY120350 Power Washer. It was a cordless power tool using one of ther 18-Volt One+ batteries. The pump could prime itself and could siphon water out of a bucket and spray 0.8 gallons per minute at 320PSI. I was hoping it would make it easier for my wife and I to wash cars and so forth without lugging out my big gas-powered 3,200 PSI pressure washer. Well, it turned out that the spray it generated was way too weak to do much of anything. By the way, I notice the listing now on HomeDepot.com says “Cold Water Cordless Power Cleaner” to probably admit it isn’t very strong. At any rate, it sat in the garage after initial testing for maybe 4-6 weeks but for whatever reason I held on to it.
Back to killing mosquitoes – I was thinking about how I could spray the Talstar out of a pressure washer pump and suddenly remembered the Ryobi unit and recalled it did kick out a better spray than the M4. I dug the Ryobi out, found the misplaced sprayer hose, set the sprayer tip to 15 degrees, dropped the siphon line into a pail of water, squeezed the trigger, let it prime and out came a great spray pattern!!!
It kicks out a really decent spray pattern at 15 degrees. I find the other two settings useless for this application – they are too weak.
Okay, the unit was never designed to be a insecticide sprayer and nobody has really used it for sanitizing because it is bulky and an odd configuration for that so guess what? It’s in-stock at most Home Depot stores and online for $79 + S&H — best of all, it kicks butt as a Talstar delivery system.
What did I do?
If you are concerned about the unit holding up, all I can tell you is so far so good. At $79, I’m really not worried about the unit wearing out. I have pumped at least 70 gallons of Talstar mix through the unit without any problem thus far but it did take some trial and error to get to where I am today.
So my first try was to drop the whole siphon unit into a 5 gallon bucket and moved it around by hand. Well, 5 gallons x 8.3 pounds per gallon comes in at 41.5 pounds and that got heavy plus it was sloshing around. I used a hole saw and put a hole in a lid with a rubber gasket and strapped it to a dolly. It still sloshed some out through the lid until the fluid level went down and the dolly made it way, way easier on my back. Some duct tape to cover the hole and seal around the hose solved that problem.
This is a 5-gallon Ace Hardware pail with a sealing lid strapped to an old dolly with a bungee cord. You can see all the long white siphon hose that comes with the Ryobi. You have a ton of tubing to work with. This worked better and when I sealed the top with duct tape it was solid but I wanted more capacity.
Safety Note
Insecticide is inherently toxic and you need to protect yourself. I wear gloves, usually a face mask (except for photos in this article), am very careful to watch the direction of the wind and take a shower with soap as soon as I am done. John, my buddy with the Tomahawk, wears painter’s Tyvek coveralls, goggles, rubber gloves and a respirator. John is taking the safest approach and what I want to stress to you is that you don’t want to coat yourself in this stuff as if it were water – it’s not. Follow the safety guidelines for whatever insecticide you decide to use and take precautions.
Coverage
So, the unit was proving itself but it was annoying to go refill the unit part way through the property. Our 1.5 acre lot is flat and bordered by a ton of brush and trees. I found that I could get really good coverage with 10 gallons of spray (1 oz Talstar to one gallon of water) and man could I nuke the brush and undergrowth. I could see the spray running off leaves and and stuff glistening wet.
Getting a Bigger and Better Tank
So, armed with the good results, I decided to get a 10 gallon tank. In searching online, it turns out there are a ton of vendors but only a few actual manufacturers. I went with a Act Roto-Mold model VT-10 10-gallon tank. I ordered it from Tank Depot and it arrived about a week and a half later.
By the way, the tank was $57.99 and shipping was $48.62! Ouch. None of the local farm stores had a tank that size in-stock otherwise I would have bought local. You can definitely just use a bucket if you want to — it worked fine for me in terms of reliability and performance. I just wanted to reduce the trips back to refill the tank.
In terms of weight, even though I was using a dolly, I didn’t want the unit to be a bear to pull. A 10 gallon tank weighs about 83 pounds when full. The dolly with a full 10-gallon tank is very “do-able” for me as I walk around the lawn pulling the unit.
Doing the Plumbing
One irritating thing was that the engineering drawings said there was a 3/4″ pipe fitting at the bottom. That fitting is actually 1″ so I had to return the PVC valve I bought and get the right size. Also, for whatever reason it is shipped lose. I had to tighten down the tank’s pipe fitting prior to installing the valve and other fittings.
Ryobi designed their hose nicely. It’s secured to the ends via fittings and it was very easy for me to remove their filter end and push it onto a 3/8″ barb fitting and secure it with a hose clamp. By the way, they do give you 20 feet of hose and I plan on going back and probably cutting it in half at some point. I velcro wrapped the extra to the dolly and it’s just way more than I think I need for this application. I’ll save the left-over of course just in case.
The Proline 107-135 is made from PVC and has 1″ female NPT fittings on both ends. It’s installed into the tank via a small male-to-male piece of PVC pipe. Bushings were used to step it down to a 3/8″ barb fitting that was used to connect to the supplied Ryobi siphon hose. It works great.Note I turned the valve assembly to the side. As I pull the dolly along everything is at an angle so by having the outlet at the side more if the liquid can come out before sucking air. I did use a ratchet clamp to secure the tank to the dolly. It’s a lot of weight and I don’t want it shifting around on me. Quick comment – the Ryobi’s pump does need to prime so expect it to expel air until it draws liquid. Also, I used their same siphon hose to not constrain the pump. It does a heck of a good job. Note I am spraying with the wind and letting it carry the droplets even further into the brush. Normally, I am wearing a face mask.Let me show you a video of the spray pattern – it works great!!
Conclusion
Boy, am I happy with this set up. I spent about $300 on the sprayer, tank, strap and pipe fittings. The dolly is close to 20 years old so I am not counting that. I’ve put about 70 gallons of mix through the sprayer and used the tank system three times now. The combination of tank, dolly and Ryobi sprayer is fantastic and will be using it going forward.
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One of my favorite move lines comes from Aliens when Ellen Ripley says, “I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.” While I would like to do that with mosquitoes, it’s just not an option currently.
Not on the table for mosquitoes yet though it does sound effective. The collateral damage is hard to justify though 🙂
This will be our third year using it and I just applied our first dose the other night – 1oz Talstar per gallon of water and than I go spray it on the bushes, around the buildings, under the eves etc. When I went to buy more Talstar off Amazon, they would not deliver it to my area and never really explained why so I figured I better blog about where to find it and also the My 4 Sons sprayer that isn’t on Amazon any longer.
This is the 3/4 gallon (96oz) size Talstar P Professional insecticide by FMC. I have an acre and a half. I use 10-15 gallons of spray depending on what all I am treating and how heavy I am applying it. That means I use 10-15oz of Talstar per treatment (1 oz TP to 1 oz water).
Buying Talstar P Pro Insecticide
My big problem this year that I wanted to make you aware of is Amazon – at least in my case they will not deliver it to our address. I’m getting increasingly frustrated by Amazon so I now buy it off eBay:
My 4 Sons M4 Sprayer
The next thing I want to do is give you a “one year later” report on the M4 sprayer made by My 4 Sons. I’m happy to report it has held up great and their customer service was exceptional. Note, I definitely drained it completely before freezing weather set in.
This is my actual sprayer the morning of 5/2/2020
Here are some lessons learned on my part and a couple of minor issues I encountered:
I bought way too much hose when all I needed was to just tow it around like a golf cart and spray stuff. I took the extra hose and saved it just in case.
I bought all kinds of sprayer gizmos and all I use is the wand. It has a brass tip, is adjustable and worked just fine for me.
The red elastic straps they provided did not hold up – the tank would fall of the cart. I just went to ace hardware and bought some 1″ nylon straps with buckles and cut them to size. I told My 4 Sons about what I did and am not sure if they changed how they are securing the tank.
One wheel broke and My 4 sons promptly sent me a replacement at no cost
The gasket on the lid was goofy and they sent me an improved model at no cost
This Spring I could not find the battery charger and ordered a replacement part from them. The price was reasonable and on their website – of course I found the original shortly there after.
As mentioned, I’ve already done my first application this year and the unit is doing great – they aren’t on Amazon any longer though. I want you to know they are a reputable firm with a good product and customer service. I would recommend that you go direct to My 4 Sons.
Just to be clear, Talstar will work in any sprayer – it’s pretty much the same viscosity as water so any pump sprayer – manual or batter powered – will work. I needed something bigger because of the size of our lot.
Conclusion
The Talstar P Pro and M4 sprayer are a great combination that I would recommend to anyone trying to deal with mosquitoes. It’s cheaper than a service and way, way more effective than the cheap stuff you buy in a store.
I hope this helps you out.
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Ok folks, quick public service announcement – just read on Business Insider about a manufacturer in Oklahoma, NXTI, who has developed a nano fiber fabric called “Filti” that is 9x better than cotton in terms of filtering and can hit N95 in commercial face masks. It’s a better filter than blue shop towels and is designed to be a filter from the get go.
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For those of you who do not know Journeyman, in more normal times, they produce some great distilled spirits, such as their Humdinger Japaleno that I am particularly fond of. They also have a great restaurant that you may need to wait an hour or two for a table if you make the mistake of showing up without a reservation.
This is one of our bottles. I’d definitely recommend you put it in something smaller for regular use.
Now, I didn’t buy their drum but we did get two of their 1.75 liter packages and we had them ship it to us to keep things simple – they are about a 30 minute drive from our house.
The sanitizer is a liquid – not a gel – and works great in a little spray bottle. I made some of my own hand sanitizer and bought some of these little bottles off Amazon and they work great.
So, this stuff seems to work well. It’s not super sticky nor does it dry out your hands. Washing with soap and water for 20+ seconds is still best but this sure helps when you can’t. I noticed today that Hoosier Brewing is also selling hand sanitizer. I can’t speak to them but it gives you another option.
I hope this helps you out.
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As you’ve no doubt experienced, going to the store and buying traditional hand sanitizer is almost next to impossible right now. This is because the whole supply chain is stretched thin. Everyone thinks about the alcohol but they also have problems sourcing the bottles, pumps, the chemicals that create the gel and so forth plus just an unbelievable level of demand globally that nobody expected.
You can make your own hand sanitizer but you need to follow proper guidelines and most people refer to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) guidance on making hand sanitizer with glyercerine and/or the CDC guidance. Bottom line is you need a hand sanitizer that is at least 60% alcohol.
Enter The Youtube Videos
A number of people have produced some great videos on what to make and I’m only listing videos from folks with chemistry or biomedical/healthcare knowledge. Always look at the ratings and read comments before you trust anything plus remember that you need at least 60% alcohol and not some weird home brew concoction that one would expect to see at Halloween.
Finding Bottles / Containers
Finding Glycerine
The Alcohol
You will need to hunt for your isopropyl or ethanol. It is often out of stock on Amazon and other online sellers as well as local stores. So, do your digging. Do not use methanol, or wood alcohol. It is toxic – you need isopropyl or ethanol or some variation of those names – isopropanol, distilled alcohol, denatured alcohol, etc.
Other Sources
A lot of distilleries are making and selling hand sanitizer under special approvals from governors and other bodies to make an otherwise regulated product in these special times. Check out your local distilleries and see if they are doing anything and help support them while they support you as well. Journeyman Distillery is one example and I did a post about them.
Conclusion
I hope this helps you and your family to stay healthy and safe.
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Preparedness Vendors
There are a number of businesses selling food that can be stored long term, survival kits and more. In general, preparedness vendors are getting a ton of orders and have backorders of 6-10 weeks so if you are concerned, order now vs. when you are in real need – be prepared. I’d avoid Amazon – those third-party sellers are gouging and also ripping people off. That happened to me already! Instead, check out these reputable vendors directly:
Augason Farms – Food, Water, Supplies – have stopped taking food orders right now they are so buried but are taking orders for other items
