I am one of those people who is incredibly sensitive to mosquito bites. I can’t be in an area where there are mosquitos without walking away with a minimum of a dozen bites and they swell up horribly. Unfortunately my apartment building is set up to encourage the breeding of mosquitos.
I have a ground floor apartment and there are huge stacks of cinderblocks and gardening tools in the little yard area outside of our apartment that we have been told we can’t get rid of but they are creating breeding space for mosquitos. There are several “chimney” areas where there are tunnels through the building that allow for windows to be built where there otherwise would not be able to be a window and the people who live in my building are assholes who just throw their trash out of the windows down into these spaces. Since we are the bottom level of the building we are the ones dealing with the garbage but much of it has been there for so long that it falls apart if you touch it with a shovel. The only way to get it out of there is through our apartment and we aren’t about to start hauling disgusting garbage through our place so in the chimney space it stays, I guess. This just creates more damp breeding grounds for the tiny vampires though. We also have a couple of gaps above and below our back door that allow them to get into the apartment. We’ve stuffed them with that black insulation tape you can get from the hardware store and stuffed towels into them to further block out our bug friends but it doesn’t seem to be helping much.
The mosquitos are getting into the apartment at an alarming rate. I’ve started bug bombing the yard and the chimney spaces every few days and we have about 8 strips of flypaper up inside to catch what we can. I also go through and make sure we don’t have standing water anywhere in the apartment outside of the cat water dishes and those get changed daily. All of this doesn’t appear to be helping though as it rains every 4 days and then heats up to 85 or 90 for the next 3 days which seems to be the perfect set up for breeding these monsters. I’ve started spraying myself with bug spray when I walk in the front door and again before bed but I am still covered in bug bites and the weather doesn’t show signs of drying out.
Our landlord stopped taking our calls about much bigger issues long ago and we are pretty much damned to live in a building with no repairs of any kind for the rest of our lease so we know right now he will not do anything about the bugs but there has to be something we can do to get rid of them. What else can we do to keep the mosquitos under control while we ride out our lease?
Can you burn a citronella candle (or 2 or 10) safely in your apartment? I find these to be incredibly effective outside, but you may need to look up the possible hazards of breathing the stuff in.
Considering they make anti-bark collars for dogs that spray citronella into their faces, I am relatively sure the citronella itself wouldn’t be harmful. So it would come down to whether or not the kitties can be around flames.
I totally sympathize with your plight…I’m also highly allergic to mosquitoes and the thought of having them in my house sounds…painful
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You can do one of three things (four really, but “Move” is probably not a viable choice for you so we’ll ignore it).
1. Block where they are coming out from. As you have already found, this isn’t working. I’m not surprised - after emergence, they can squeeze through pretty small cracks and holes, and I doubt that you have really sealed them up well in any event.
**2. Clean out and drain the breeding habitat. ** This is the best choice. It is the only way you will keep them out for good. However, it seems that you can’t do this (I am having trouble visualizing the physical layout of the area you are describing, but it seems like these areas are pretty inaccessible).
**3. Drop a larvacide into the breeding habitat. ** This may be your only choice. Get some Bacillus thuringienis israelensis (Bti) briquettes and drop them in there. make sure these are Bti, and not plain Bt, only Bti works against mosquitoes. Bti is harmless to vertebrates etc… Just hope the mosquitoes aren’t resistant to it. Without knowing the species you are dealing with (I don’t know your location, but its probably either Culex quinquefasciatus or Aedes albopictus) I can’t say how likely resistance is. Try it - it worse, you will be no better or worse off than before.
Contact your local vector control agency to evaluate the situation. If it really is a problem, have them write the landlord to correct the situation and ask for a copy.
Obviously, the best thing for you to do is get out of the lease, which is why you want vector control to get involved. You are not an expert in mosquitoes. They are. That documentation is what will back you up for breaking the lease if it comes to that.
I agree. Houston’s history included many deaths from Yellow Fever; even today, West Nile Virus & St Louis Encephalitis are public health concerns. Harris County Public Health & Environmental Services has a Mosquito Control Agency.
See what your local government(s) have to offer. There will, at least, be advice for you. And perhaps some “advice” for your miserable landlord.
Good advice, IF there is a local mosquito control agency. Some places have them, some don’t. Some have them, but they are useless. I have worked with them all over the country - quality varies considerably by state and by county.
Technically I could withhold rent but we’ve been going back and forth with the housing courts and lawyers and all that jazz about constant flooding and a ceiling collapse and the courts have decided that my landlord can’t be held liable for any of this kind of stuff. He refuses to take our calls and we have to contact him by registered letter through a lawyer if we want to speak with him at all. It took him a month to fix the ceiling that collapsed on my head and the courts don’t consider this an unlivable condition.
I will call the local vector control agency today but I don’t believe they will allow us to break the lease. As you can see by my example above anything short of your landlord lighting you on fire seems to be an acceptable living situation to the courts. Unless you are impoverished or have a child of course, but we don’t fit either of those categories.
I am in NYC and while I love living here and could not be forced to move by giants with red hot pokers I have learned the hard way that the city is set up in favor of landlord’s rights over resident’s rights. I can mention the harboring vermin thing to the vector people and report him to the city but honestly he has been fined at least a dozen times in relation to our apartment and he still hasn’t done anything about it. I think he might just like to pay fines.
NYC does not have an independent Vector Control district. Mosquito control is run out of the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene - they have an Office of Vector Surveillance and Control.
That being said, the control office is very good, as these things go. I have worked with them in the past, and still collaborate with folk at the Wadsworth center (the NY state health lab in Albany). I still don’t know what they can do about your lease, but they can definitely help you get rid of your mosquitoes.
I love the plug-in nerve toxin devices they sell in Europe. I’m sure they’ll kill me in the end, but when you’re in one of those canal filled cities where they don’t believe in window screens and lunatics keep leaving windows open all day. . . I don’t think I’d use them all the time at home with pets and such, though. http://www.avoidmosquitobites.com/insecticides/plug-in-mosquito-killers.asp
Those devices were banned in the EU over a decade ago. One day a plug-in air freshner type device was dousing the Amsterdam flat in nerve toxins, the next day I had three bites on my face the size of half a golf ball. The tiny, but draining Scottish mosquito-equivalent, the midge, prefers tall men and fat women, and seemingly certain blood-types.
For those allergic to nerve toxins, a net is essential, plus each species will have it’s own repellent. The Scottish midge avoids ‘Avon Skin So Soft’, a skin cream that isn’t marketted as an insect repellent, and, allegedly, cintonella oil. It might be true, tea-tree oil kills ticks completely while they are still in your skin, allowing you to remove the head and body.
Your best bets are insecticides and cleanup. Repellents help, but I’ve found them to be less than 100% effective when there are enough mosquitos. I don’t know if the Mosquito Magnet brand of device is still available. It was pricey, but I’ve heard a couple of good reviews. There is also a device for commercial usage (and maybe private) that sprays a PYR based insecticide at programmed intervals. This worked well for me in a restaurant environment, but mosquitos weren’t the main problem there. Good luck, this problem bites (sorry).
Can we have a reference for this? Because they were still being sold in the shops in England less than a decade ago, and are still being sold by, for example, Amazon UK
Sorry to disappoint you, but this is an Urban Myth. Skin So Soft won’t repel anything.
I’d like to suggest some products to repel the little fuckers (while you work on the big picture).
You can wash key items of clothing or bedding in permethrin solutions like this one. Permethrin is not for putting on people, but only on launderables.
You yourself might try a stronger bug spray; 100% DEET is most effective, though you should be extra-careful with it. A little goes a long way. WARNING: it will melt some synthetic fabrics, notably those wonderful stretchy “travel knits.” I think it’s the acetate in the travel blends that melts, but I’m not sure. If you don’t want to go 100% (it is kinda toxic, as I understand it) then the higher the DEET percentage the more effective the bug spray; 30% is better than 10%. Not sure about plain OFF, but I’ll bet it’s on the weak side.
If you hate the idea of DEET, or have reactions to it or whatever, you might try “Bug Blocker” brand herbal stuff. It’s the only herbal blend that I’ve found to work, and it has some well-conducted studies to back it up (or at least it did five years ago when I was researching mosquito repellents, and none of the others did). You do have to be vigilant about re-applying it regularly and about putting enough on initially.
(Citronella makes me sneeze, BTW, so I avoid it; I’m not sure how effective and/or toxic it might be indoors.)
Also, have you tried any bite treatments? I used to have a little “bite zapper” battery-operated spot-heater gizmo that seemed to help, but I don’t think I was particularly allergic to the skeeter bites (just particularly inundated). I also had a little dauber pen of something that smelled like ammonia, though I can’t remember whether it worked or not.
Both are Bti. Mosquito bits are a granule formulation used for quick kill, while the dunks (briquettes) are a gradual release formulation for sustained killing. You can actually use them together.
