Flea Trap Tips and Mod

[music] Hello everyone and uh welcome back to my vlog. As you can see on the screen here today, we got these uh flyby flea traps. Now, the reason why I'm going to talk about this is because I've actually got a couple of these and I'm going to tell you the uh the pros and cons. The pro is they work very very well. And if you have cats or a rabbit that lives indoors, outdoors or dog, uh you're going to find that they fleas are attracted to them and they they're going to bring them in. Now, they get into your carpets, they get into, you know, um get into you given half a chance. Get in your bed given half a chance. And so these flea traps are a great way of rather than spraying, powdering, putting chemicals on your cat, which is, you know, if you find that's the way forward, that's the way forward for you. But I don't like doing that too often on my cats. I don't like every month putting, you know, um, a droplets type [snorts] thing onto the backs of the necks. And they don't like me doing it to them either. So, I thought, well, I'm going to invest in a couple of these. 26.99 [clears throat] and uh give them a go. Now, when they come in, they're great. Whereas, what they say, they got bulbs. And the bulbs are they're like this. These 15 W bulbs, 240 volts. Oh, that's a insulator, but a micer. And um but the problem being with these is one they're expensive. Three of them for £10. And two is if you knock it, I mean they don't last very long anyway. I think the longest I got out of mine was about a month. All right. And but if you if it's on and you knock it, they're the old style filament, you know, like a Edison. And if you knock it, that's it. You know, I've walked past one before, just clipped it with my foot, the actual trap when it's been on the floor, and it's just killed the bulb. Like I say, three for a tenner, expensive, and uh that's not the way forward. So, I thought, what can I do about this? Because the actual trap thing works brilliantly. And I'll show you how brilliantly it works. So, a couple of weeks ago, I swapped out the old pad that was in the bottom and uh and I put another one in. And this is 2 weeks. I could probably say it's just under two weeks actually. It's about a full week and 5 days. That's what I got. And I didn't even think I'd got fleas in here. I treated the cats. I hadn't been bitten myself. I hadn't really seen them going at themselves apart from the big one that spends a lot of time sat out in the garden. Um he does a little bit, but that's but he picks up bugs on him anyway. And I've got a comb. I used this flea comb and the bugs are so easy to crush. I know that they're not fleas. So, I didn't actually realize I'd got fleas in my home. And uh like I say, within two weeks, this is what I've got. Now, give it another two weeks and one of these bulbs would have to be replaced. And that's uh just over £3. Like I say, they're about £10 for three of them. And uh I don't see that as being the sensible way of going forward. Uh, and it's 240 volts as well, right? Um, so what I did with mine, and what I'm going to show you is, and I've been using this now for a good while, and I know that it works, is one, you can reduce the price of your flea mats or trap pads, whatever it is you want to call these things. Um, you can reduce the price of these by just buying generic ones. the round circle ones and the generic, they don't quite fit as great as the other ones. You have to push it in, but that doesn't that that doesn't that doesn't really matter. Now, one of these sides, this side is peelable. Okay, it's the other side. It's peelable, right? You can see this kind is peelable. All right, and uh I'm just going to put that back for a minute. And what you do is you just pull that off. You bend that cuz you want to fit this in here. Just push it in so it's nice and in nice and solid way in. Yeah. And then you can just when you've already partial peeled it. It's a bit of a bugger trying to do it when it's in there. But where you pop, like I say, it's a bit of a bit of a bugger where you partial peeled it. Yeah. and get it in. Cuz if you put your fingers on it, all you're going to do is you're going to stick to this thing cuz it's very very sticky and um yeah, you're going to find you just keep pulling it up and you get annoyed with it cuz it does that. But anyway, once that's in, you can put your finger on the inside of it and just pull this off. We're going to leave that for a second. [cough] Excuse my coughing. I've still got this cough. It's over five weeks now. And um right, let's look at what I did to this. Now, this is uh pretty raw. It doesn't have to be anything brilliantly special. I've used a stop and tail bulb from a car. It's 12 volts, you know, and it will fit in here quite nicely. There's a just on the wire there's a cable tie. I can It's a bit stiff to pull it, but I can just pull it down and off just to show you this. So, and that's all I've done. You see? I can't. Let me try and get rid of that. Got to get rid of that. I mean, I don't like the I can see the uh the flashing of the light. Something to do with the mix, the sun, and that cuz it doesn't normally do that, does it? I've had this lamp for so long. Anyway, so there we go. It doesn't even matter what polarity they are. You just want to make sure that you get a a connection on one part of the bulb. I've done mine so it comes onto the tail part cuz that's the part that would normally be on for longer. And um and I just pull it into the hole here because the bit of what you what you get with this is to fit the 240 bulb. And so I've just unscrewed that, taken it out, and um just used the rest of the fitting. I've literally just done a cable tie there to stop the bulb from falling down and it fits in there quite nicely. And that's it. Perfect. Right. And in order to make it more efficient, um rather than use 15 W, I've got a switch mode power supply here. So, it's the cheapest um you know, form. It's not linear. It's switch mode. And this uses about four watts. Um, I can't actually show you that because the app on my phone which I'm using to record this is um is is is where I get that measurement from. And how do I get that measurement? And this is the other thing about these as well is turn it on at dusk. Yeah. I used to leave mine until I went to bed and then I'd switch it on. Right. But I wasn't catching so much. But when you turn it on in dusk, so if you look up how a flea does its business, it gets up at like dusk and goes out shopping and doing what it does. A flea goes out hunting, shopping. I don't know what they do, right? But they get up. That's what that that's what time they start becoming active at that time. So I got one of these. I mean, I got a whole bunch of them, but I'm using one of these these green sun. this particular one that I use and it has a free app for your phone and not only can you set it so at dusk and dawn according to the times um from the internet it must pick it up because it's wireless you know uh and it and it does it for itself then it will switch it on and switch it off so you know when the sun goes down it turns it on when the sun comes up it turns it off again brilliant right so you don't even have to think about it you just got figure out where you're going to put it. And uh and it uses four watts because it tells me it's got an energy monitor on there as well. You can actually put in the price that you pay your tariff. You know, if it's like 23p, 24p a unit. I think in this country it's about £7 a kilowatt. Now, I don't know. They're just trying to rip us off left, right, and center. No, it's probably about 25p unit, but that's still a ripoff. But never mind. They've got to build up their big infrastructure somehow and we got to pay for it and then pay for it again. Uh so yeah, and this this will let you know, you know, you you can buy any automated one that you like. I use this one uh this particular brand, it works for me. I've had I think about 16 of them and only one's failed and I think that was the one that was on the microwave. Um, so you know, I can't say it's 100%, but they do for me. And the ones I've got still work, and I've had them for like what two years now over. And uh, and this is what I use. And I call it flight uh, flea trap. And it's set to come on and go off. 12vt 3 amp. Doesn't matter about the polarity. Uh, and it's just the um wall, you know, the plug adapter thing. I switch my power supply uh that I had. If I got one for 2 amps, I'd have probably put that in. Uh, but I use one 3 amps. I did use a linear one first at 10 volts. Um, 1.2 amps. I used to get really hot. I mean, toasty hot. You couldn't once you've been on for an hour, you put your hand on it, be like, "Wow." You know, that's a radiator hot. And that means you're emitting heat, which is energy that you're losing through the power supply. This one doesn't do that. So, there you go. That's it. That's what I thought I'd show you. My little modification to my uh my flea trap. It works really, really well. The bulbs last forever. I haven't changed this bulb uh since I swapped it over from the other ones, and we're talking months. I haven't changed the bulb. And all right, I mean, I wasn't putting this thing on so much through the summertime, and maybe I should have been, but I'll show you that the long bit on these, if you get one of these particular brands, this seems big enough, but then small enough at the same time, so you don't fall in it yourself, but big enough to uh encourage the fleas, flies, flappy things through the summer, you know, cuz you might leave your windows open. I'm not been leaving my windows open. These all these fleas have been caught. They're what's in my carpet. They can't get in my furniture cuz my furniture's leather. And uh not leather from a cow. Leather from a pretend cow for those that might be worried that a cow was injured for me to sit my butt on. No, it's only when I eat them that they have a problem. All right. So, um yeah. So, it's coming out my carpets. It's coming out from around the edges between the skirting boards and the and the and the carpets. Wherever fleas go and they go and hide. Um it may be encouraged because it's warm enough when you put your heating on. Uh maybe that could be encouraging uh eggs to hatch, but this little baby is catching them. These are not able to reproduce. These are not able to bite me, bite my cats, infest anymore, or do anything else. And every time I see a mat like this, it's victory for me over the flea. And you can have the same sort of thing. You don't have to put stuff. You don't have to do the the the the bombs, flea bombs. [snorts] You don't have to put the um chemicals on your cats. Uh if you find out your cat does have fleas, if you can't get them off with the flea cane, you can do [clears throat] maybe one u one thing of the, you know, the droplets and stuff like that. are probably of those companies that make those hate at me saying this now, but this is evidence that these work. And I promise you this is no more than two weeks old. In actual fact, you can probably tell if you've used these yourself and left them for a period of time, you'll see all sorts of uh you know, cuz your cats are always molting a little bit. So, you normally see quite a lot of uh bits of fur on here. And you can see the odd bits of fur, you know. Um but um but yeah, this is uh no more than 2 weeks old and that's what I've caught. And that's from a place that I didn't think had any fleas. So there you go. That's my offering for today. And uh I hope that helps. And I'm going to bring more videos like this. I'll find other bits and pieces um you know that could be quite helpful uh to some people, especially if you've got cats and you want to use this sort of stuff. But anyway, thanks for watching, guys. And uh I'll catch you in the next one. Bye for now.