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electrical floor grid to kill rats please

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Abe Hans

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Ok I know i will get flogged for this 'unsafe' method of killing my backyard varmints. but please just go with it. I already tried spring traps, buckets, cages, rat poison. what i kind of learned is they are not interested in my food bait since they have alternate food source ,palm fruits, etc. Every day, as I am sitting in my living room looking out the sliding door, i see them running across the cement patio right in front of sliding door. i am thinking if i can lay down an electrician grid on the cement which could instantly kill them as they run across it. the jolt would have to instantly kill them or paralyze them the moment they come in contact. i dont want them escaping the jolt. i am just not sure how they will react since rat/mice are very careful on what they touch. I will be sitting there with a on/off switch in my hand monitoring the trap to pick up the dead rat for burial. no bait is involved , i already know their jogging path; just need to lay a live grid. any ideas to share on this please. i dont have pets or small kids and the ground is dry. my background; i am a technician with above average diy skills electrically speaking; let me know if this subject is out of scope with this forum so I don't waste your time. thanks.
 
Rodents do a lot of damage to machinery at my place, particularly vehicles. I am anxious to see how your project progresses. They are very clever, suspicious, and persistent.

If I were doing anything like you suggest, I would have the grid completely off for certain periods. Otherwise, the mice may feel a slight tingle and not get fully on board and into the killing zone. I don't have a clue about the ratio of on to off time. Having watched a few, I would start with the off time > on time. Maybe something like 5 seconds off and 1 second on. But, that is just a guess for where I would start.

Chipmunks seem to be much dumber and are easier to deal with.

John
 
hi Abe,
This eco friendly method worked well...;)
I tried an electric stun trap for mice some time ago, they seem to be able sense the electric field with their whiskers.
E
Hameln1.jpg
 
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jpanhalt, thanks for that input and I can certainly keep posting progress. i been thinking about this for a while but want to minimize rework by tapping from all the talents here. (my wife fears mice/rodents and refuses to sit in back yard )
 
Ok ericgibbs I will give the young lad a call; will happily advance him the payment-just leave the children.
...its a folk lore musical telling the story of a Piper who, after ridding the town of its rat population, is refused payment and in retribution he abducts the town's children through the power of his flute. :)
 
perhaps you could include Magpies ...
hi gran,
me too! , they are evil little sh**s, killing nesting fledglings, eating nest eggs etc.

E
 
I'd go all high tech, board with metal grid, bait in center, IR led above and a ring of IR detectors around bait. Beam broke = rat fried. Maybe just a little overkill - pun intended.

Edit, plus one on addition of magpies.

Mike.
 
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Hi Eric , I can't stand them .. Magpies... they treat our allotment like a larder ... nothing is safe , even take gooseberries , bury them then come back for the grubs that it attracts, sorry a little off thread Abe , We do get rats on the plots, they seem to ignore any bait / traps , fortunately the fox keeps the numbers down... now moles they ..........
 
So a lot of people seem to like this idea but I don't see many people offering advice on how to do it well.

So my initial thoughts on this;
  • It would be sensible to have this isolated. i.e don't just lay a live and neutral wire on the ground, you'll get ground leakage current. Instead use a isolation transformer or a battery system with boost converter.
  • DC is better than AC. AC will cause the rats to leap off the wires and straight into your arms, DC causes the subject to go completely ridged
  • you don't need much current to kill, so lets step-up the voltage to ensure a dehydrated rat (high internal resistance) is still killed
 
I've also read that mice somehow feel the electrical voltages with their whiskers, and are scared away.

So, I really like Pommie's suggestion. Place the bait surrounded by IR sensors.
Once that a rat is sensed, wait a couple of seconds tho ensure that the rat is not just sniffing around, and then....zzaaaaaaaaaappp!

I would use a discarded microwave oven transformer as the zapping source. Those have sufficient voltage and current to completely fry a rat with a quick zap.
Return to idle afterwards.

All of this can be done with the IR sensors, some timers and a few discrete logic gates. Plus a power relay to drive the MOT.
Or if you are proficient with code, a single microcontroller plus some ancillary components will do.
 
I would keep it simple from the start. If I used an IR sensor, it would be to detect when to turn on the voltage.
I've also read that mice somehow feel the electrical voltages with their whiskers, and are scared away.

So, I really like Pommie's suggestion. Place the bait surrounded by IR sensors.
Once that a rat is sensed, wait a couple of seconds tho ensure that the rat is not just sniffing around, and then....zzaaaaaaaaaappp!

I would use a discarded microwave oven transformer as the zapping source. Those have sufficient voltage and current to completely fry a rat with a quick zap.
Return to idle afterwards.

All of this can be done with the IR sensors, some timers and a few discrete logic gates. Plus a power relay to drive the MOT.
Or if you are proficient with code, a single microcontroller plus some ancillary components will do.

That is why I suggested turning the killing voltage off/on arbitrarily (at least from a mouse prospective). I have a lot of mice in my barn and have observed them. They have natural predators, like snakes, birds, raccoons, etc. , including me and my dog. They don't stay at any place in the open very long.

One thing to be aware of is that their hearing (like bats?) extends well into the ultrasonic -- something like 80 kHz to 100 kHz. A potential problem with beam-break IR is whether that "benign" 38 kHz or so generates any sound. Mice are also severely near sighted. That is, it is assumed that their vision is mostly blurred, so they rely a lot on feel.

I would (maybe will) focus my attempts at building a killing grid they will crawl across. Droppings is a good sign of that. They do not like slick or oily surfaces. Painted surfaces (like weathered car paint) does not bother them. A grate may work, but I am thinking of cutting kerfs into a board (e.g., 2' x 4' plywood), pressing the appropriate size wire (10 to 12 awg) into the kerfs, then running it through my thickness sander to give a relatively uniform rough surface, some of which is copper and connected to the kill voltage. Before electrifying it, I would leave it out and look for droppings.

Too many other, higher priority projects right now.

John
 
Use a MOT and double capacitor stack. I have been using that for three years now zapping wasps.
Simple un-shunted MOT, 100 Watt ballast in series with the 240 V winding. HV Output to a voltage doubler which gives around 5600 Volts DC.
Make an appropriate grid contraption. safe for cats and other pets but with an access for rats and some bait.

Video of how to build the powersource is attached here.

 
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