OK tinkerers here you go

[elchivito]

I dust my barns and loafing areas with diatomaceous earth during fly season. Every few days I fog the beejeezus out of everything to keep flies at bay.
I've used an old Hudson gas powered backpack dust applicator for years but it has taken a permanent crap as of today.

Having just mailed off an enormous check so that the wife may go on an extremely plush and pricey trip with a bunch of her artsy fartsy friends down the Colorado River in September (no cancellations, she's going if I have to exhume her and put her remains in a dry bag), I am loathe to spend hundreds on a new duster. This morning as I was blowing off the patio with my electric million mph Toro leaf blower/vacuum, it occurred to me that I might be able to rig a powder holding can of some sort onto the intake of the thing. It's about a 5 or 6 inch opening on the bottom of the unit that has an aluminum finned turbine in it that generates the breeze out the other end. It's designed to be a vaccum also, with an attachment that fits onto that end to suck up and grind leaves and blow them out the other end into a bag. I never use the vacuum feature. I think I'm going to start real redneck like and just get a plastic Folger's can, punch a few holes in it to accept bungie cords, fill it with DE and strap it on and see what it does. The grinding fins on the turbine should serve to disperse the powder into a nice fog.
Your thoughts?

[kerry]

My first thought is 'What the hell does diatomaceous earth do to flies?" My second thought was why on earth aren't you going down the Colorado also? Thirdly, it seems like a good plan.

[SwampYankee]

Since I don't have a lot of experience with motorized foggers, my only thought is it the velocity coming out of the blower too much? The only foggers I've had contact with were gas and had a relatively low (compared to leaf blowers) "nozzle" speed. Is there a speed choice on the electric blower or is it simply On/Off?

[BobK]

Ya know the EPA wants to do away with that stuff don't ya?

[SwampYankee]

Originally Posted by kerry

My first thought is 'What the hell does diatomaceous earth do to flies?" My second thought was why on earth aren't you going down the Colorado also? Thirdly, it seems like a good plan.

Kills the maggots. Absolutely . I'd give it a shot.

[elchivito]

Originally Posted by kerry

My first thought is 'What the hell does diatomaceous earth do to flies?" My second thought was why on earth aren't you going down the Colorado also? Thirdly, it seems like a good plan.

1.) Food grade DE is an excellent contact pesticide. It's like tiny razor blades on the exoskeleton of bugs who are in contact with it. Slices them up and then it's high absorption characteristics dry them out. Also an excellent feed additive. The animals follow behind me with their mouths open and will lick the residue off the barn walls. The food grade DE is ground in such a way that it isn't harmful to breathe like pool filter or garage floor absorbent grade DE is.

2) I've done a number of Grand trips over the years. This one came up suddenly and I'm jammed up in late summer. It's a privately chartered upscale motor trip. I don't like motor trips. Besides, if I had to spend 14 days with this particular group of effete snobs, I'd likely do an Everett Ruess about the third day out. Not my kind of dirt-bag old school rocket box boating at all. They'll have solar powered blenders for their evening cocktails and color scheme matching NRS straps for their gear. I'd have to stagger around with a warm beer in my hand watching them plein air paint at Vasey's and make interesting conversation all the time. Gives me the willies just thinking about it.

[elchivito]

Originally Posted by SwampYankee

Since I don't have a lot of experience with motorized foggers, my only thought is it the velocity coming out of the blower too much? The only foggers I've had contact with were gas and had a relatively low (compared to leaf blowers) "nozzle" speed. Is there a speed choice on the electric blower or is it simply On/Off?

It's pretty much infinitely adjustable with a switch you turn. Goes from a soft breeze to way too fast for leaf blowing. At high speed I can use it to blow sticky cobwebs off the rafters on the underside of my porch. I'm thinking at lower speed it may be just the ticket.

[elchivito]

Originally Posted by BobK

Ya know the EPA wants to do away with that stuff don't ya?

Hadn't heard that. Best stock up. I use about 100 lbs. a year.

[cmac2012]

Originally Posted by elchivito

1.) Food grade DE is an excellent contact pesticide. It's like tiny razor blades on the exoskeleton of bugs who are in contact with it. Slices them up and then it's high absorption characteristics dry them out. Also an excellent feed additive. The animals follow behind me with their mouths open and will lick the residue off the barn walls. The food grade DE is ground in such a way that it isn't harmful to breathe like pool filter or garage floor absorbent grade DE is.

Dude, you're way ahead of me. I was just going to mention a youth club I worked at years ago - it was a Salvation Army place, they had a swimming pool, and the pool maintenance guy told me that no way do you want to breathe the DE that he used.

Never heard of DE being a good food additive.

[SwampYankee]

Originally Posted by elchivito

It's pretty much infinitely adjustable with a switch you turn. Goes from a soft breeze to way too fast for leaf blowing. At high speed I can use it to blow sticky cobwebs off the rafters on the underside of my porch. I'm thinking at lower speed it may be just the ticket.

In that case, I would say definitely!

[elchivito]

Originally Posted by cmac2012

Dude, you're way ahead of me. I was just going to mention a youth club I worked at years ago - it was a Salvation Army place, they had a swimming pool, and the pool maintenance guy told me that no way do you want to breathe the DE that he used.

Never heard of DE being a good food additive.

I think I said feed additive, as in livestock feed. It's often used as an anticaking agent in livestock feed and many people use it and believe it works as a natural de-wormer, although I am not among those who do. It's also widely used in the organic grain industry as a seed storage pesticide to control weevils in grains that are stored prior to processing.
Keep in mind that pool grade and food grade DE are very different. The pool grade stuff is crystalline silicate and can cause silicosis if inhaled. It can cause internal damage if ingested, too. Food grade DE is amorphous silica and is not hazardous. It isn't fun to breathe and I still wear a mask, but it won't really hurt you unless maybe your lungs are compromised in some way to start with.
I dust my dogs with it and it works great to control ticks, which they are always picking up when they are down by the creek all summer with the animals. I dust my poultry with it to control mites, as I'm not real keen on eating the residues from Sevin dust in my eggs or meat. I hand apply it to wet spots in my loafing areas and it will either kill fly larvae outright, or get onto emergent flies as they leave the ground and then kill them in a short time.

[The Clk Man]

I was advised by my buddies here to use DE to get rid of my pest problem. That stuff works.

[Yak]

If I understand your concept, you're suggesting using the vacuum action to suck up powder via some sort of coffee-can replacing the vacuum attachment, then dispersing via the normal blower instead of "vacuuming" into a bag. Is that about right?

I'd think the DE would act like tiny razor blades on the blower components and you'd have trouble with flow control and your DE would go out in a big "whoosh" with uneven coverage.

If this is a product you use every few days for a large area, I'd say bite the bullet and get something that does the job right in a moderate amount of time. That puts you back in the hundreds of bucks range.

Or if it's a small(ish) area and you maybe want to tinker, then what about something cheap like a hand crank spreader, but hook it up to a cordless drill with a right-angle chuck and add a larger hopper. Murray McMurray Hatchery - Dust applicator

Trigger controlled machine-gun or flame-thrower style

[jplinville]

You could fashion a pick-up tube to siphon the powder directly into the blower discharge pipe, about 6" downline from the motor, keeping the product out of the motor. To be able to get that kind of suction, you'd be looking at something in the 3/4" diameter range...

[elchivito]

Originally Posted by Yak

If I understand your concept, you're suggesting using the vacuum action to suck up powder via some sort of coffee-can replacing the vacuum attachment, then dispersing via the normal blower instead of "vacuuming" into a bag. Is that about right?

I'd think the DE would act like tiny razor blades on the blower components and you'd have trouble with flow control and your DE would go out in a big "whoosh" with uneven coverage.

If this is a product you use every few days for a large area, I'd say bite the bullet and get something that does the job right in a moderate amount of time. That puts you back in the hundreds of bucks range.

Or if it's a small(ish) area and you maybe want to tinker, then what about something cheap like a hand crank spreader, but hook it up to a cordless drill with a right-angle chuck and add a larger hopper. Murray McMurray Hatchery - Dust applicator

Trigger controlled machine-gun or flame-thrower style

It's not small. It's two acres of big barns, loafing sheds, poultry housing etc. plus horse paddocks. I typically fog about once a week and in order to conserve the DE, I need it to fog, not just disperse and drop to the ground. There are two reasons this cockamamie idea entered my tiny brain. First, the old Hudson could not have taken it's fatal dump at a less opportune time. The temps hit the high 80s and 90s this week and the first fly bloom is happening. I need something now. Second, I realized that this leaf blower/vac blows WAY better than that old duster ever did and better than a 500 dollar one my neighbor has, which I'll probably end up borrowing for a week or so. The few times I've tried that thing as a vacuum, it's sucked up little stones and sticks and other debris and eaten them without a hiccup. The turbine/grinder thing appears to be cast alloy of some kind, probably aluminum. There seems to be pretty good separation between the air path and the motor, I don't think a lot of powder will get in the motor, but it might. I think for lack of better sense I'm going to try it out tomorrow. If it works I'll post pics to the redneck dust blower. It's the one linked below by the way, I see the description calls the impeller "magnesium"

http://www.toro.com/en-us/Homeowner/Yard-Tools/Blowers-Vacs/Pages/Model.aspx?pid=Ultra-Blower-Vac-51609