A Lowe’s Trip For a Renter
Even though I rent my apartment, I still venture to Lowe’s once in a while. We’ve started getting ants in our apartment so I wanted to pick up some bug killer.
When we first moved into our apartment, the finished basement area was crawling with spiders. This didn’t really bother me but the fiancee wanted them gone. So we picked up a bottle of Ortho Home Defense Max at Target. It worked great, killed the existing ones in seconds and prevented other from returning. Now that the Spiders (predators) are gone, it probably explains why we have ants. This time I picked up the big jug of the Ortho, on sale for $11 for 1.3 gallons vs. $4 for the 28 oz.
The pump thing on the big jug is really slick. You hook the hose up to the big jug, then slowly pull back on this spring loaded contraption on the nozzle. Then just pull the trigger for a “super soaker” style jet of bug killing action. The reduction in ants was noticeable within an hour.
Also while at Lowe’s I picked up some pipe insulation for our hot water pipe. I’ve noticed that for the first person to take a shower in the morning, the hot water never lasts very long. Once the hot water tank recovers, subsequent showers are nice and warm. I suspect this is from convection currents cooling the water in sections of the hot water tank but not in the area where the thermostat is. By insulating the first 3 feet on both the cold and hot water pipes nearest to the heater, it is supposed to reduce this effect. At $1.64 for 6 feet of insulation, I gave it a shot. I’ll report back if there is any noticeable effect.
