Mosquito Magnet Economics

I'm pleased to report the contraption actually seems to work: the swarms were greatly reduced. Plus, it's great to witness dozens of the little blood suckers caught in the collection box, slowly dying of dehydration. So it works. Great. Now the question is how much this ongoing mechanized slaughter is going cost.

First off, the machine itself runs around $300 for the base model. Then you have the ongoing consumables:

• Electricity. I was kind of bummed to discover you actually had to plug this thing in. I assumed that it worked all its magic from the propane tank itself. There is a cordless model, but it works off a rechargeable battery. Curses. Not only don't we have flying cars yet, our automated sucker slayers are still tethered by copper shackles. This is not the future I signed up for.
  Anyway, I think the power draw is fairly low, it's usually just running a fan (although startup does entail hot surface ignition, which pulls more juice for the first five to ten minutes).
• Propane. The machine will consume about tank per month. Refilling a tank runs around $15. So far, we're up to $15/month, or $45/season.
• Attractant. The unit comes with a single octenol packet to better lure the beasties to their doom. The fine manual recommends popping a new packet with each new tank. American Biophysics sells a three-pack off their official website for the highway-robbery price of $25 plus $9 shipping, while Amazon offers the same three-pack for $18 (I usually am able to bundle up my order enough -- often padding them out with books I want to buy anyway -- to qualify for free shipping). So if you obey The Man, that attractant bumped up the price to $21/month or $63/season. I will inject the subversive idea that perhaps the attractant isn't all that necessary. I ran the unit all season off the one packet that came with the unit, and didn't notice a reduction in size of end-result mosquito-corpse fur-balls.
• CO₂ cartridges. This is the non-obvious consumable. MM wants you to blast the carburetor with CO₂ every other tank. While they put an threaded-cartridge-to-Schrader-value adapter in the box, you have to purchase the cartridges separately. Ordering a three-pack direct from MM will set you back $18, again tacking on another $9 for shipping (versus Amazon's much more sane $10). Oh, and please ignore this suspiciously similar product.
  Possible economic hack: I think you may be able to get away with buying an Ultraflate Pro once, which then will enable you to use the much-less-expensive-but-otherwise-identical unthreaded CO₂ cartridges (50¢/each versus $3.33/each). The Ultraflate Pro will pay for itself after four three-packs, and I think you may waste less cartridges with the better control offered by the tool (the bundled Microflate offers little control, and it's easy to waste a cartridge by letting it release too quickly).

Completing the math, and assuming you stick with the tried-and-true threaded CO₂ cartridges, I'd peg the cost at around $26/month or $78/season. Guesstimating the resulting carnage, I'd say that's about 25¢ per corpse per season. I'd say it's worth it, especially if you can ebay the fur-balls...

Sunday, September 26, 2004
10:39 PM