TowerNetWeb

January 7, 2012

The Difference Between Insects Bites

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 1:56 am

Most insects will defend themselves if they feel threatened. This is fairly amazing when you think about how small insects are likened with the mammalian interloper. Most insects will only attack if you wander into their territory.

There are also insects that have to drink blood and they actively seek their prey. This sort includes insects like mosquitoes, bed bugs and fleas.

Ants form the largest segment of biters. All ants will try to bite if they feel the need, but most black ants simply do not have big enough mandibles (or jaws) to get a grasp.

The big exception in all ant and ant-like species are the soldiers, which have huge mandibles compared to the workers.

Red ants may bite with or without poison and some sting as well. Formic acid is their normal chemical weapon. Some ants inject it, which is what we feel if we get bitten by red ants, but other ants spray it into the eyes of its attackers.

The most agonizing sting of any insect is provided by the Bullet Ant of Central and South America. The Bullet Ant’s sting has the top rating possible on the Schmidt Sting Pain Index. The index ranges from zero to four; zero being painless (to humans) through two for bees and wasps to four for agonizing pain.

The Fire Ant, which is renowned for its painful bite ranks a 1.2 on this scale, but level 1.8 is likened to having a staple fired into your cheek. The European honey bee is on number two and the Red Harvester Ant is on level three.

Some bites and stings are not so high on the index but may still become fatal. The Jack Jumper Ant is in this group and individuals, particularly hypersensitives, have been known to die from Fire Ant stings, which inject piperidine alkaloids rather than formic acid.

The jaws of the Trap Jaw Ant are the fastest closing jaws in the animal kingdom. They have been measured at 230 KPH (143 MPH). Another curious ant defence is carried out by a Malaysian species: it ejects its stomach on to its aggressor.

The stomach acids contain acetophones which completely immobilize insects. Regrettably, the soldier dies because its stomach has been torn out.

Bees, ants and wasps are all related in the order called Hymenoptera. Bees and wasps only sting although some wasps do have large jaws too. One definition of a wasp is ‘any insect of the order Hymenoptera that is neither a bee nor an ant’ (Wikipedia).

Not all wasps are black and yellow. There are not a lot of insects that do not have a type of wasp preying on it, which makes them very vital in the biocontrol of harmful insects. A lot of wasps do not sting their prey to kill it for food, they sting it to immobilize it.

When paralyzed, the wasp lays her eggs in the prey, which becomes fresh food for her young when they hatch out. This is usually the only time when a wasp eats meat in its whole life, because adult wasps feed on nectar and honey like bees.

As a bee stings it releases pheromones which encourage other bees nearby to sting too. The most aggressive stingers though are vespid wasps (common black and yellow wasps).

Fleas, ticks and bed bugs, unlike mosquitoes, really feed on blood, that is they use it for food, whereas the mosquito needs it as the ‘white’ of her eggs. There have been times in our history when losing a few drops of blood to a flea was not the worst thing about being bitten by them.

They also carried the Plague, which wiped out a substantial percentage of the populace of Europe a number of times.

Spiders and scorpions make up the reasons for the majority of insect bites but they are comparatively rare.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on numerous subjects, but is at present concerned with Insect Removal. If you want to know more, please go over to our website now at Pest Management at Home.

January 6, 2012

The Household Pest Called Bed Bugs

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 10:39 pm

Insects are quite amazing animals and very few species are given the credit that they deserve for sanitizing our planet and acting as food for more traditionally beautiful animals like birds, However, there are also insects, the existence of which is a problem to be happy about. One such insect is the indoor pest called bed bugs.

I cannot believe that the lowly bed bug has a friend in the world other that its fellow bed bugs. Bed bugs tend to live in bedrooms, near their usual prey, so they do not have natural enemies except millipedes, but not many bedrooms contain enough millipedes to reduce a population of bed bugs.

In fact, most people would be just as anxious if their bedroom did have hundreds of millipedes as they would be about bed bugs. So, bedbugs tend to just grow in number at an alarming rate as there is nothing to keep their numbers in check.

The bedbug is officially called Cimex lectularius. It is a small, reddish brown, wingless insect that can run very quickly. You might see a small beetle the size, colour and shape of an apple pip running very quickly in the shadows tight to the skirting boards. These are bedbugs.

On the way out to dine, it will move rapidly, but on the way hone it will be slower because it will be full of your blood. They find their victims by following exhaled breath and while they arrive, they release pheromones to alert their friends that there is a meal on the table or on the bed at least.

These house pests live quite near their ordinary source of food, which means near a bed in a bedroom. They might live in the mattress if it is torn, in crevices of the bed frame or near-by furniture or behind loose skintings.

Furthermore, they can live fairly cheerfully in furniture or between the pages of books and magazines.. Fractured plaster or curling wallpaper are also favourite hiding places. This is a real problem because they will get their heads down almost anywhere, even in a sunken screw hole.

They tend to sleep in the daytime and most of the night too, but they are most active an hour before dawn when they come out if they need a feed. They can last for months without feeding, so if you are being bitten regularly then you know that you have many bed bugs in your room.

If you have an infestation, you should know about it because of the itchy bites and marks, but you might also see marks of them on your bed sheets. If you see red or brown streaks on your sheets, you almost certainly do have them. The red marks are your blood and the brown marks are faeces or your digested blood. You might also see shed skins as they moult.

Bed bugs are very difficult to be rid of, so if you would like to do it yourself, find out how to go about it. Spraying pesticide will not do it or call in the contractors.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on numerous topics, but is at present involved with bed bugs treatment. If you want to know more, please go over to our website now at Pest Management at Home.

September 9, 2011

Set Up Your Garden With Proper Planning

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , — Jeneliya Fernando @ 6:51 pm

Most homeowners choose to landscape their yard to make it look more appealing and eye-catching. Some of them use the services of a landscape provider while other just do it by themselves. For those who are trying to cut costs, landscaping your garden by yourself is the way to go. You just need to know the right materials to buy such as plants, lawn grass, fertilizers, plant labels and so on. You must also be familiar with the planting zones in your city prior to buying or growing particular plants. You may also include a separate area as part of your garden for kids and install some swing sets like Gorilla swing sets.

The first thing you should consider in planning for your garden is to look at the style, size and shape of your house. Make sure that your garden will complement your house and not get attention away from it. Remember that the purpose of landscaping your yard is to enhance the beauty of your house.

The types of plants that you intend on growing should also be taken into consideration. Therefore, you should know about the planting zones in the city where you live so that you can grow plants and trees that are suitable in your state. By doing this, you can definitely use your money wisely since you are buying good plants and trees that can grow well in your area. You will also must look into the soil requirements of these plants that you’re planning to nurture.

Once you have bought your plants, you can place plant labels on them to help you distinguish one plant from another. These are also great for keeping the garden organized. The next thing that you have to consider is the drainage system. You have to make sure you get right water drainage, otherwise, your garden will be a disaster. You can ask some assistance from a good garden enthusiast or even landscape gardening expert.

For those who have kids, you can have a place for them in your garden. You can actually build some play house for the kids and put up swing sets including Gorilla swing sets which have been known to be secure and sturdy. This could not only bring charm to the exterior of the house but could also provide some fun for the whole household.

Make your house appear more lovely with these landscaping ideas making use of the Plant Labels to nurture appropriate plants in your state. Choose high quality materials when buying plant labels, manure, outdoor furniture, lights and even Gorilla swing sets for your backyard.

August 26, 2011

How To Care For Your Fish Pond During The Summer

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 12:36 pm

The summer is the best season of the year to sit in the garden with your favourite ice-cold drink and gaze at your fish and the rest of your garden. It is the liveliest period of the year for both your pond and your garden flowers and the birds and the bees are at their most lively too.

If you would like to keep on enjoying your garden and pond into the evening, you can arrange exterior lighting at strategic points to highlight the best locations. However, despite wanting to simply relax in the warmth, there are still some chores that you will have to carry out to care for your fish pond during the summer.

The first thing you have to do is make sure that you fish are getting enough oxygen. The problem is that warm water holds less oxygen that cold water, so you have to take extra precautions in the summer. This is quite simply corrected by mechanical, automatic methods. There are three basic techniques of aerating fish pond water.

The most important way is the use of a fish pond filter. Try to have the water pumped several feet above the pond water level. The water is then passed through the filter and it should fall down a few steps back into the water. Every time the water falls, it will pick up more oxygen, which it will return to the pond.

The second technique is also the most spectacular – the fountain. Most fountains have a couple of settings to allow different water patterns. All the patterns will oxygenate the water. A high, single jet of water will make the most noise when it falls back into the pond, while a pattern of say, ten less-powerful sprays will scarcely make any noise at all.

The third way of oxygenating the pond water is the ‘bubbler’. This unit sucks air from above the waterline and blows it out it below the water line – it is the type of aeration unit that indoor fish tanks use, but on a larger scale.

The use of these three techniques in the summer will ensure that your fish always have enough oxygen no matter how warm it gets.

The next matter is feeding. Fishes’ metabolism increases during the summer. They also have to put on fat, because they will not eat much during the winter. You can make certain that your fish get plenty of insects to eat by fitting a light by the water side. You can either take a line off the pond pump or you could place a solar powered light there in stead.

The insects will be attracted to the light and fall into the water. The fish will soon learn about the insects. Insects are fishes’ natural food, so this is the best means to build them up without running the risk of putting too much food into the water which could decompose and negatively affect the quality of the water. Lighting up your pond in the evening is also a fantastic way of getting more enjoyment from your pond.

This is the last task that you have to perform in order to care for your fish pond during the summer – keeping the water pristine. There will be a build up of algae which has to be cleaned out, but basically, you are now set to get pleasure from your pond over the summer months.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on quite a few subjects, but is now concerned with visual comfort lighting. If you would like to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at Outdoor Wall Lamps.

June 28, 2011

how To Get Rid Of Garden Pests

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 1:16 pm

Gardening would be a great deal simpler without interference from garden pests. Most garden pests are small, but they sure are a big hassle. The the majority of common garden pests are insects, of course and it is a curious thing that these insects tend to prosper in circumstances that are not quite right for flowers. Most garden pests do not actually live on the plants themselves, they live in rotting rubbish nearby or in saturated soil and go to the plant to feed. Some insects live in the roots if the earth is too wet.

So, one of the first things to do is to try to reduce the number of harmful insects in your garden. You can go a long way down this route by clearing away any old decaying rubbish and decayed wood. Make sure that your soil is well drained and keep cats out of your garden by squirting them with a water pistol until they get the message. Cats discourage birds and many birds eat insects.

You should also support insects and other animals that feed on garden pests. Ants can be a pain, but they do eat a lot of insects. Ladybirds do too and so do spiders. Larger animals such as frogs, toads and lizards eat loads of insects, so a small open-ended garden pond could be created to breed frogs and toads. Lizards will appear on their own, if the conditions are right.

It is worth taking active steps to encourage the right sort of garden animals. Never use powerful insecticides on your garden as you will destroy all the insects that are on your side as well and the spray may poison the earthworms that are helping to aerate and dry out your soil.

A small pond will encourage birds, frogs and toads, but frogs and toads also like a nice rock to shelter under during the day. Place a few rocks the size of a loaf of bread around your garden in the shadow of trees or bushes. Erect a bird table. Birds that eat bread and nuts do not often feed on insects, but some do. However, the sight of other birds in your garden may hearten insectivores to come in and have a look.

There are fundamentally two types of garden pests: the ones that actually feed on the plant and the ones that suck the sap out of it. Caterpillars can be picked off and destroyed of or you can spray the leaves that are being eaten with a poison for the caterpillars to feed on. Many of the sap-suckers can be seen easily, others cannot. A solution of washing-up liquid and water such as you use to wash dishes will kill the majority of of these including greenfly (aphids).

Slugs and snails do a lot of harm, but some birds including chickens and thrushes find them a delicacy. Chickens can be useful allies in a garden, but they can be destructive too with all their scratching. Otherwise, you can reduce the population of slugs and snails by destroying their eggs.

They tend to lay their eggs in decomposing leaves or rotting compost, but not in compost heaps which are normally too hot for them, so a good clean up will eliminate a lot of the next generation.

You can kill the adults by placing a few low containers of beer near your plants. The slugs will drink the beer and drown. It is extremely efficient. Slug pellets should finish the t-totallers off. Taking these actions will hugely reduce the number of garden pests attacking your plants.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on quite a few topics, but is at present concerned with exterior wall lighting. If you would like to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at Outdoor Wall Lamps.

June 27, 2011

Keeping Cats Out Of The Garden

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 8:47 am

It is very difficult to keep cats out of your garden, but do not give up, it can be managed. Cat owners may not understand why gardeners want to prevent cats gaining access to their gardens, but there are justifiable reasons, it is not always that gardeners hate cats. Cats are ferocious hunters and can also be very destructive.

For instance, my next door neighbour had a cat, but became lonely when her daughter moved away, so she permitted the cat to breed. Now she has six cats. But cats are not like dogs. My dog stays in my garden not bothering anyone except by barking if a stranger walks past the house However, that is his job and he is not only telling me but the neighbours too. These six cats do not stay in their own garden though, so we have all acquired six cats whether we want them or not.

The first problem I became aware of was that birds stopped coming to pick my dog’s bowl clean in the afternoon. Then I saw a cat eating a lizard, a beautiful nine inch specimen and then I remembered not seeing a lot of lizards lately. There is one lizard, the Tokay, that they have completely wiped out – I used to listen to them calling at night, but no more.

Cats also dig up plants when they defecate and use furniture as clawing boards, so I do not want these destructive animals in my garden. But how do you keep cats out of your garden?

Walls are rarely protection against cats, but cats will often prowl along the base of walls and if they come across a gap, they will possibly go in out of inquisitiveness, so plug all low-level gaps in your fences. There is not much you can do about the top of your wall short of putting broken glass or electrified wiring up there, but that is not a good idea.

Some dogs are good at keeping cats away, but not all. My dog got a nasty and completely unexpected swipe of claws across his nose one day. He used to chase them when they were kittens, but now they have grown up, he only growls to tell me a cat is on the premises. I cannot blame him.

In Australia, many gardeners reckon that transparent bottles full of water confuse cats, so they stay away, but in my experience, only Australian cats react in that way.

A row of prickly bushes or flowers along the base of a wall where cats frequently come in works. At the bottom of high walls too, where the cat cannot see them until he is on top of the wall. I often see cats mewing (in frustration, I hope) on the top of one of my walls. The only route down is to go back.

If you still cannot keep cats out, then you will have to train them not to come in. This is easiest achieved by using several methods. If cats are using your flower pots are toilets, try smearing the pots with pepper, lavender, lemon, mustard, or tobacco. Or you could leave a mothball in each pot. Some of these will work for you, others will not.

Then there are commercial repellents, but I do not want to resort to them. However, if you have a big garden and a big problem, it could be the only method. There are also high frequency sound emitters. Humans cannot hear them, but nearly all animals can, so I think that that is deplorable too.

At night, motion-activated exterior lighting is a great upset to cats. Cats have extremely sensitive night vision so a quick flash from a floodlamp really puts them off a garden.

The best disincentive is water. You can get motion-activated sprinklers, which are brilliant at keeping cats out of your garden, but I like to sit in my office or in the garden with a powerful water pistol and squirt them by hand. The lizards have not come back yet, but nor do the cats quite so frequently either.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article writes on a number of subjects, but is at present involved with visual comfort lighting. If you would like to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at Outdoor Wall Lamps.

June 1, 2011

Choosing Your Garden Furniture

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 12:28 pm

Once you have finished laying your patio, your deck or your lawn, you will unquestionably start thinking about how you can enjoy more time out of doors. Therefore, you will need some garden furniture. Many places sell garden furniture. You can try home improvement centres, large department stores and garden centres. There are also businesses on line that will deliver. The difficult job is picking your garden furniture.

There is a very broad choice of designs of garden furniture – a design to suit every person and complement every garden. So, before hurrying down to the garden centre, it is worth considering for a while what you would like to accomplish with your open-air seating area. Do you require a theme? Do you want to have company or dine there? Or do you just want to sit quietly, enjoy your garden and read a book?

Indeed, the answer may well be a permutation of all those things. If you simply want to sit there with a drink and a book, you may be satisfied to just buy a couple of chairs and a small table, but if you want to have guests or eat family meals outside, you may prefer a more substantial table. A large oak table would be quite costly, but it would look magnificent and last for a ten years or more.

If you choose a table, you will have to have chairs to match, but do you want loungers as well? They could be of plastic and kept in the shed until wanted.

You will likely need some form of shade. This can be supplied by folding, even removable umbrellas or by overhanging trees or shrubs. Wisteria or clematis can do the task as well and cost you next to nothing.

Do you intend cooking in this space? If you do, what and how? Do you fancy a barbecue pit or a proper hob and oven? A lot of people in regions where the climate permits are doing a great deal of cooking outside in a carbon copy of an indoor kitchen, but without all the walls.. If you plan the outdoor kitchen carefully, you will be able to use it in the rain too. I find it lovely not to have kitchen smells in the house and cooking out of doors is a good experience as well.

If it gets nippy in the evenings then you can think about buying some patio heaters. They are not expensive to buy or to run and one standard patio heater can keep quite a group of people warm. (By the word ’standard’ here, I mean upright, like a lamp post).

Lighting is the last large point on the list when deciding on garden furniture. There are actually two sorts of garden lighting to mull over: lighting to see by and lighting to lure insects away. Again, you could use standard lamps to light up your patio. They shine their light far enough so that you can still look at your garden after dark or you could have individual wall light on dimmers.

The one light I would categorically have is a mosquito lantern. Hang this away from where you sit, because they do attract insects to them which they then electrocute with a gratifying zap.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article writes on a number of subjects, but is at present involved with visual comfort lighting. If you would like to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at Outdoor Wall Lamps.

May 4, 2011

How To Extend The Life Of Your Summer Garden

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 1:11 pm

The overwhelming majority of gardens look their best in the summer whether they produce flowers, fruit or vegetables, the same is probably true of your garden. When the garden looks so good and the weather is fine, it is lovely to spend more time out of doors.

There are two means of approaching this: you can try to extend the growing life of your garden by say a few weeks or a month or / and you can extend the number of hours you can sit in the garden per day. By taking both routes you will get the greatest pleasure from your summer garden.

The first thing you can do to extend the life of your summer garden is construct some raised growing beds. Raised growing beds heat up more quickly and cool down more slowly than a growing bed in the soil. This is because the brick walls of the raised beds will absorb and hold the sun’s heat, warming the soil faster and retaining it.

It will also chill down more slowly as winter draws on because frost comes up from the ground and your raised beds will be that much higher so the chill will have to travel further. You can also try to heat these raised beds artificially if the first frost has not yet arrived. Apply the heat to the walls of the beds.

You may find that the cost of heating the flower beds is not worth the money, but if you have a special function on just at that time of the year when the weather usually takes a change for the worse, you may think the cost worth it to have a beautiful floral display for that special day.

Raised growing beds are definitely the best route to take, but if for some reason you cannot construct some raised beds, you could give your plants a head start by planting them in pots ahead of when the first frost is predicted for. if you have a greenhouse, you will be able to get even flowers started in this way. Then, you could transplant more mature plants outside when the weather permits. This will extend the life of your summer garden forward a little.

Another way of extending the garden’s summer life a little is to cover the plants over at night. However, you must keep an eye on the plants, because these covers are very effective. You have to be able to remove them before the sun warms up or your plants may swelter. You cannot go to work in the morning and leave your plants covered over all day.

The second way to get more enjoyment from your summer garden is to extend the number of hours per day that you can sit outside. This is easily achieved with exterior lighting. You can either run electric wiring to your garden and have lighting installed or you can use solar powered lighting, which will save you money on installation and electricity costs.

Once you have enough light, the only other things you might have to have to extend the life of your summer garden are a mosquito trap and a patio heater.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article writes on quite a few subjects, but is at present concerned with exterior lighting fixtures. If you would like to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at Outdoor Wall Lamps.

March 9, 2011

How To Prepare To Meditate

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 2:39 pm

There is a lot of nonsense talked about meditation. I do not mean what it can do for you because that is difficult to prove one way or the other. I have read people saying that they found all sorts of things in meditation and who am I to say that they did not merely because I have not had the exactly same experience.

I believe that there are many stages of evolution and so what one person experiences in one way another might experience in a entirely different way.

No, I mean that there is a great deal of rubbish talked about how one has to meditate. I am reading an piece this moment by someone who says: ‘… for a successful meditation practice, everything has to be ideal ….. the room has to be set up in such a way …’ and so it goes on. The person who wrote that piece seems never to have even thought leave alone ever meditated.

Meditation has always been most often carried out by people with a spiritual bent. Of those people, most people who meditated were monks, because they were seeking enlightenment and had the time and peacefulness to meditate. It was difficult to find the time or the peacefulness if you were a subsistence farmer with ten kids running around.

Anyway, lower orders of monks are not famous for living opulent lives where ‘everything … is ideal’. They live quiet lives and when they want to meditate, they will not be disturbed, no matter where they are but particularly in their cells.

My father used to drive out to a cliff top and meditate behind a bush looking out 100 feet over the Bristol Channel. Frequently he did it in the middle of the night.

It is best that the people you live with understand that when you want to meditate that they must try not to make a great deal of noise and certainly not call you by name or barge into the room where you are.

How you can achieve this in your household, you know better than I, but talking to cohabitants and displaying a sign in a prominent position can help as can always meditating at the same hour of the day, but is not usually practical. Most of us have to take our free time while we can.

Turn off anything that makes a noise. Turn off phones and even the door bell, if you can. Open the window, if it is not unbearably cold or raining cats and dogs. Take a shower and put on loose-fitting comfortable clothes like pyjamas.

Sit on the floor, if you can; cross-legged, if you can. If you are nearly there, try sitting on a cushion or pillow. There are things known as zafu or meditation pillows, which are small and thick.

Some are round and others are square, but a round zafu may be 12 inches in diameter and four to six inches thick. This is to raise you off the ground enough to take the strain off your hips and knees, if you are not used to sitting cross-legged.

It will encourage a correct posture, that is a straight back. It is also softer on the behind and when you are sitting comfortably, you may begin.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on a number of subjects, but is now involved with the waterproof mattress pads. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Egg Crate Mattress Pad For Sale.

February 2, 2011

How To Find Affordable Camping Gear

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Owen Jones @ 8:51 am

Camping is a very popular activity among the under Forties. People like to go hunting, fishing, hiking, walking or just camping with their friends, family or lover. The outdoors is attractive and can be romantic. Lots of people want to get a little closer to nature and the easiest way of doing this is sleeping under canvas, or nylon or something man-made like that. Another benefit for the young is that it is inexpensive.

However, it is not only inexpensive, it is healthy and instructive. All children should go camping either with their parents or the scouts in order to learn something of nature before they get locked into a career to pay the mortgage and forget that there is life outside the city. You know, there are inner city children that do not know that milk comes from cows? How ridiculous is that?

So, if you are going to take an education in nature by the horns, you will have to have some camping equipment. Inexpensive though camping gear is relative to the gear required for other activities, most people still have to be a bit cautious how much they spend.

If you fall into that category, then this article is for you. Before we get into the nitty-gritty, it is worth pointing out that if you have the money, you can do worse than simply going down to the local sports shop or camping shop and buying all your equipment from them. Buy everything you require in one go and ask for a discount. if anything ever goes wrong they will remember you as a big spender and fix it for you right away.

However, the remainder of have to be a bit more careful with the cheque book. If you know a bit concerning camping equipment from your parents or from the scouts and do not mind second-hand, then car boot sales and garage sales can be just the ticket.

Frequently people are selling stuff because their kids have left home and they are having a clear out or perhaps they have had more children and the pup tent is no longer any use to them.

I sold a nice tent not so long ago for peanuts because I knew that I would never need it again. The beauty of these sales is that you can put the tent up or get the vendor to put it up for a closer inspection. Look for rot, sniff for mildew, check the number of pegs and guide lines et cetera, but do not get carried away with perfection, you can buy extra pegs, lanyard and a mallet, but you do not want to have to sew up holes or replace zips or fly screen.

Classified ads are another decent source of gear, but pick the device up yourself so that you know where to take it back if you do not have the chance to inspect it properly before handing over the money.

EBay and Amazon are also pretty decent, but you have to do some research on the manufacturers’ names and the normal retail prices otherwise you may end up purchasing a costly copy, a kiddies’ toy tent or just junk.

One of my favourite stores to browse is the Army and Navy Surplus store. Try going into an A&N and coming out empty-handed. If the equipment in there is good enough for our troops to risk their lives with, it’s decent enough for a week in the Poconos.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on a variety of subjects, but is now concerned with the egg crate foam mattress pad. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Egg Crate Mattress Pad For Sale.

Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress