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So my water goes out this morning, and when I took the cover off the pressure switch, it was gummed up with roasted fire ants. I guess since it is so dry, they are trying to find any moisture they can and are there are tons of them in the floor of my pump house. What is the best way to get rid of them. Some kind of bait/trap station in the structure, or a massive dose of some granular outside around the foundation?

I had the exact problem, got luck and the pump didn't burn up. This seems to happen a time or two a year. After I took the switch apart and cleaned it up I hosed the entire area down with cypermethrin. Ammo is a brand name there are a bunch of generics. Supposedly it's hot on ants. Holler back in a year and see how my test is going.

go buy a small bottle of malathion and mix a couple of ounces in 5 gallons of water....will kill them as fast as it's poured on them....

When I lived in GA had this problem. Spray it about once a month with some demon. Mix 1 pack to a gallon of water. Use electric contact cleaner to get them off.

Bengal fogger will smoke em.

Thanks for the tips. I had some fly spray that I already had mixed up for my cows that I used after I got the switch freed up, and they haven't been back yet, so I guess I'll see how long that works. Maybe we'll get a rain pretty soon and that will be the end of it.

they will mess up the contacts sometimes. shut off the power and use a fingernail file to clean up the contacts to get some more use out of it

cbakerf81 wrote:they will mess up the contacts sometimes. shut off the power and use a fingernail file to clean up the contacts to get some more use out of it

Did that too. I grew up with a well, and had to get up many a morning in the winter and help my dad get the water back going because of bad contacts. We started changing them every fall about the first frost, and never had any problems since.

Ants love electricity for some reason. It seems to draw them to well contacts, aerobic septic tank air comprerssors and control panels. I had a heating and air conditioning guy tell me about "cow insect repellent ear tags". He said if you take and put one around the electrical component, that the ants would never come back and bother it. I havent tried it but it sounded good.

cbelmore wrote:Ants love electricity for some reason. It seems to draw them to well contacts, aerobic septic tank air comprerssors and control panels. I had a heating and air conditioning guy tell me about "cow insect repellent ear tags". He said if you take and put one around the electrical component, that the ants would never come back and bother it. I havent tried it but it sounded good.

It must have something to do with the magnetic field that the wiring produces or something like that. I always thought they navigated my pheromones or something. I didn't think about the fly tag, but I can see where that would work. It' been a couple of days now, and I can't see were any more have gotten fried in the contacts yet, so maybe I've got them whipped.