Fire Ants - ARRRGHH - But Not For Reason You Think

[YuccaFlatsRanch]

What possesses fire ants to get into electrical boxes and short out electrical parts?? For the second time in 8 years Fire ants have invaded the contactor switch on my A/C system and shorted it out. Fortunately I had an extra contactor switch and the knowledge of how to replace it but why - Maybe they get their jollies that way??

[deaconjim]

I don't know why, but they seem to love electricity. They always built mounds around my electric fence ground rods for some reason.

[GrannyG]

Had the same problem last summer at my rental....they got into the AC Unit and I had to call the repairman.....also, they got into the soaker hoses and ate them up, had to throw them away....they are horrible little gremlins !!!!

[EDDIE BUCK]

Yep and telephone connection boxes as well. Eddie

[texican]

Fire ants are everywhere... they investigate everything... and when one inevitably gets into an electrical hot zone, they short out, get 'killt', and emit pheromones... 'please help, something has killed me'... so a dozen or so soldiers come to rescue the worker, and, yep, get killt... emitting a dozen times more pheromones... and on and on, till the short knocks out the circuit.

If you 'look', you'll see a mass of ants in the electrical area...

[pourfolkes]

Is your unit on a slab? I ask because some one told me that ants will not cross chalk and I though, yeah, right, sure, but since I keep my dog food in a metal can outside with a lid and I was tired of having to throw it out because of blasted ants, I gave it a try. It worked like a charm!!!! Now granted, after the rain, I would have to go out and redraw the circle around the can, but, hey it was better than wasting the dog food!

[fordy]

............They don't like gasoline or diesel . I used it liberally , on mounds in close proxomity too my home before I sold it . Since the EPA keeps removing effective poisions I used what worked ! , fordy

[quietstar]

A Dow chemical engineer years ago claimed that the arc of electrical contacts opening and closing formed a gas that drew them like a powerful narcotic. I've found them packed so tightly in a high amp 220Volt AC contactor that it shut the unit down. I use WD-40 for clean up and it continues to repel them for a long time...Glen

[jen74145]

They DO that? :eek
Great. I hate the nasty things, they're already out and have taken over in the most inconvenient places.

Any way to prevent it?

[Alice In TX/MO]

I put Amdro out around my house, the well pump electrical system, and the AC unit on a regular basis, approximately once a month in the summers.

[ugabulldog]

bengal roach spray works for me, alot more % of active ingredient than most sprays.

[VOR.]

They've gotten into my pressure tank switch two of the last three years. I kill the mounds with Amdro when I see them, but they still sneak past me.

[Jenn]

Bury stuff deep enough and it's safe- did that for our pool electric (and it came out of ground on the concrete slab for the pool! and was never disturbed there, only where it left the house before burying it deeper). However for the barn just had to replace the wiring in most active areas every couple years. Good thing didn't need to be to code so I got pretty good at doing it myself, and pouring piles of dead ants out of the switch boxes.

AL fire ants are a lot calmer than TX ones though so no such problems yet.

[zant]

When we had our deep well put in,the installer put a 5" wide glob of grease on the wires and said "do that every coupla years and fire ants won't burn anything out"..it's worked for 4 yrs so far..

When I lived in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, my neighbors all used so much motor oil moats around their central air equipment that the local wells became so contaminated that the water was undrinkable..our AC was killed numerous times by those evil fire ants ..

As I recall, Texas lost that super collider project due to fire ants..!!!!