DT1750

After a wet summer and Hurricane Matthew, my Orlando home on a drainage pond was soggy and absolutely overrun with mosquitoes. The lanai and front porch were literally covered with them, and going outside just to walk the dogs was a suicide mission. I was able to knock them down for a few days at a time with hardware store pesticide sprays, but that was getting expensive, gross, bad-smelling and probably toxic. As soon as a new batch would breed and move in from outside the spray radius, the place was uninhabitable again.I did a lot of research on mosquito traps and settled on this one. I know some mosquito species aren't attracted to light, but mine certainly are - any covered areas lit at night were mosquito meet-up zones. I didn't really want to fool around with propane or attractants, and thought I'd just give this a shot. Brother and sister, does it catch bugs! The instructions say to give it 2-4 weeks to have a good effect, but it provided relief on our back lanai literally overnight. I quit spraying once I ordered it, then plugged it in on the lanai when it arrived -- let it sit right on the floor -- and ran away. By morning I had a huge catch of mosquitoes in the trap (along with a load of moths) and none roosting on the walls and ceiling as usual. I was able to walk the dogs without having to slap any skeeters off me. I was so impressed, I ordered another identical unit for the front porch. At this writing, the one in the back has been running for almost a month, the one in front for two weeks.Just for kicks, I thought I'd wait a bit to empty the front unit so I could show what 2 weeks of catch looks like (attached). That's a hefty mass of mosquitoes in there. Thousands, for sure. Feels weighty in the trash bag. The sweet heft of success.I hardly ever see live mosquitoes hanging around the front porch or back lanai any more, and I haven't sprayed again since buying these traps. It's also dried out and cooled down a little -- 60s at night, 80s in the day -- so hopefully that will all work together to interrupt the breeding cycle and get back to a normal level of mosquito annoyance. So, at least for my situation and with my species of light-loving mosquito, this product totally worked.Tips and thoughts:I'm not doing *anything* to maximize my catch. Both units are sitting in a spot on the floor that is convenient for me and near my outlets; people say to put it higher to maximize how many insects you catch. I'm not using any additional lures. I'm still catching a ton of bugs and most of them are the targets - mosquitoes. Maybe I'll play with better placement and lures eventually, but for me this product has been "set and forget."The visible light also means it catches a lot of moths. I don't have anything against moths especially. My high tech solution -- other than the 2-week catch I photographed for visceral effect -- is to just open the trap when I see moths bouncing around in there. They'll usually flutter right out. I might free a live mosquito or three ... but they're dumb, they'll be back.This model does cast a fairly bright visible blue light. I'm about 100% sure that this visible light is the primary reason it works so well for me, but if you were wanting to use it somewhere that you want to keep dark, that's a non-starter.It's labeled as "whisper quiet," but as others have pointed out, the fan does have an audible hum. To me, it sounds a lot like a buzzy AC circuit, or the humming of a pot on an induction range. It's not awful, but it's not silent. Both of my traps sound identical.Repeating what everybody says: turn it on and leave it on; don't shut it off unless you're emptying the catch bin. Just toggling this trap on when you want to go outside does not work. If hungry mosquitoes have a choice of you or the trap, they'll go for you. You want the trap to vacuum them and their families up when you're not there, and they don't have anything better to do than go check out that funny blue light. The instructions say to put the trap far from your living area, and I did that -- mine is about 30 feet from where I usually sit. But I'm fairly certain that an as-yet unkilled mosquito, hungry for blood, is going to zoom right to me and ignore the trap entirely. The effective defense seems to be to make all those mosquitoes dead, or interrupt the breeding cycle so they never get born, well before you present yourself.Since the light seems to be a very effective part of the lure (at least for my mosquitoes) avoid having other bright lights nearby that may seem more attractive. My traps catch the most mosquitoes when the lanai or porch lights are off at night. I'm planning to switch all my exterior lights to motion sensors for convenience and security with minimum bug appeal.I'm continuing to do all the common sense, non-pesticide things everyone should do to control mosquitoes: get rid of standing water, avoid over-irrigate, treat unavoidably wet areas with Bt ("Mosquito Dunks"), etc. But these traps seem to have made the critical difference in preventing re-infestation from elsewhere. It's really been transformative and wonderful.A final unsolicited editorial comment on the UV + TiO2 = CO2 lure technology: I don't personally believe in it. While the photocatalysis reaction is a genuine phenomenon, scientists have not been able to measure any carbon dioxide plume coming from DynaTrap units (e.g. [...]) and even just thinking theoretically, I head-scratch over where you'd get enough carbon out of other atmospheric carbon compounds to make this a meaningful lure effect ... VOCs? Organic emanations from dead bugs in the catch bin? But I'll give DynaTrap and their resellers a pass on what is possibly a bit of snake oil here, since this trap absolutely does work --- albeit I think for other reasons.It seems well-made, does what it says on the tin, effectively reclaimed my outdoor living areas within days of deployment, and ended my overdeployment of insecticides. I'll report back on reliability after I've run them for a while longer.

I first bought this skeptical of what a little fan and light bulb could possibly do to control the biting insect (more than just mosquitoes here in PHX) but I was beyond pleased to find that this thing WORKS. After plugging it in (24/7, always on), and locating it in the farthest corner of my yard, I quickly realised that the days of gardening covered in bug spray were behind me.While yes, it takes a few weeks to make a big dent in your population, the wait is very much worth it. In my suburban backyard, I went from always having to use bug spray (and still getting bit) to never using any and never getting bit in about a month.I’ve left my unit running 24/7/365 for a year and half now (and still on the original bulb), and I will never go back. I’ve sent various other DynaTraps to friends and family as gifts and they have all praised their power. So long as you follow the instructions, your trap will quickly catch moths, mosquitoes, biting gnats, etc.

I researched this product thoroughly before my purchase. My patio area is thick with mosquitoes making it all but impossible to enjoy the out of doors, at least during mosquito season. I read glowing reviews of how effective the Dynatrap is at catching mosquitoes and clearing them from your immediate area. But I also read negative reviews both on Amazon and on the web about how utterly ineffective the Dynatrap is at catching mosquitoes. So I left my research feeling equivocal about how good this thing might work. But I decided to give it a try mostly out of desperation because foggers, citronella candles and incense just doesn't work at all. I really want to like the Dynatrap...it's attractive, well built, super easy to use and clean, well designed and, despite what some reviewers have said ...it is whisper quiet. You have to basically put your ear physically on the unit to hear the fan. And I like the long power chord. Some people complained about bulb life but I don't think I'll be one of those: nothing is perfect and if the dang thing really works then changing an expensive bulb a few times a year would be oh so worth it. But here -in lies the rub: does it actually attract and catch mosquitoes?? Just to nudge the odds in my favor, I bought 2 different mosquito lures and placed them inside the Dynatrap bug trap basket as recommended. The unit doesn't need extra mosquito attractant because it produces it own mosquito lure in the form of a CO2 trail emitted by the unit. But I was told that a separate mosquito lure would increase my catch rate and that sounded good to me: anything to get rid of the little buggers. However, I'm sad to report that, after 3 days of use, I haven't trapped a single mosquito. This unit seems to mostly attract moths which I don't really want to kill. The trap basket was mostly moths and flying gnats (a problem of thier own since they bite too). But no mosquitoes...even with 2 extra lures! To be fair, Dynatrap does say very clearly in the instructions that it takes several days or weeks before you start to see results in terms of reduced mosquito numbers. And that only makes sense since what you are basically doing with any mosquito trap is reducing the local breeding population thus making lower population numbers with each successive generation of mosquitoes. So I get it: a few days does not an effective trap make. However, you'd think it would trap ONE of the little suckers in 3 days! And I checked the basket carefully because I wanted to free the months. So...3 stars for now but I will revisit this review in a few weeks when I will hopefully have good news about how fantastic this product works on mosquitoes. Fingers crossed.Update:Well I've had the DynaTrap for over a month now. The lightbulb burned out after only a couple weeks. The unit trapped maybe 3 mosquitoes despite it being deployed in the center of our back patio, literally surrounded by clouds of mosquitoes. Not to mention the fact I placed 2 different mosquito attractants in the unit to increase my catch rate. The only thing this product did was trap lots and lots of moths. It did precious little to trap mosquitoes. I would highly suggest avoiding this product unless you want to spend lots of money on replacement bulbs and rid your yard of moths. Extremely disappointed.