Over the past few days, we've had quite a lot of rain. Yesterday I was replacing a small DC controller that had gotten wet when the wind blew the cover open (I must not have clicked it closed). While doing that I opened up a nearby DC distribution box and was greeted by several thousand small ants!
I sprayed the outside of the box and inside of the lid with Raid fast acting insect spray. That killed about 50% of them and the rest went nuts moving all the eggs around. I didn't want to directly spray the circuit board.
After a lot of the remaining ants fled I unclipped the DIN mount DC converter and fuse distro board, all the while shaking ants from my hands. The DIN mount tray for the distro board was disassembled and an old paint brush used to cleaned all of the ants from it. They'd stashed eggs everywhere! Luckily the DC converter is a sealed unit.
After spraying the rest of the box (now empty), the last of the dead ants were brushed out. Reassembly only took a few minutes due to the DIN rail mount system I use. The other CG-1000 box I use is on the light pole, but there were zero ants in there. I sprayed it as a deterrent anyway.
Next my attention turned to the CG-1500 mounted up in the footpath tree. Last year I'd seen a few ants near it, but never any inside the box. Well, this time there were thousands of them covering the whole inside of the box including the PCBs. I slammed the lid closed and sprayed the outside of the box. It was literately raining ants and ant eggs so I had to get off the ladder real fast!
Once the "ant rain" had reduced to a drizzle, I opened the box again and sprayed the inside of the lid. This box has a lot more inside so I didn't want to pull all the modules out. This time I left the lid open while the remaining ants all fled the scene. About 30 mins later they seemed to be all gone excepts for a few stragglers. Another spray of Raid around the enclosure exterior was done after closing it up. I'll wait to take it all apart for a full check and clean until the season is done, unless I have issues before then.
TLDR Version:
Have you had issues with ants getting into your controller boxes? How did you deal with them?
I sprayed the outside of the box and inside of the lid with Raid fast acting insect spray. That killed about 50% of them and the rest went nuts moving all the eggs around. I didn't want to directly spray the circuit board.
After a lot of the remaining ants fled I unclipped the DIN mount DC converter and fuse distro board, all the while shaking ants from my hands. The DIN mount tray for the distro board was disassembled and an old paint brush used to cleaned all of the ants from it. They'd stashed eggs everywhere! Luckily the DC converter is a sealed unit.
After spraying the rest of the box (now empty), the last of the dead ants were brushed out. Reassembly only took a few minutes due to the DIN rail mount system I use. The other CG-1000 box I use is on the light pole, but there were zero ants in there. I sprayed it as a deterrent anyway.
Next my attention turned to the CG-1500 mounted up in the footpath tree. Last year I'd seen a few ants near it, but never any inside the box. Well, this time there were thousands of them covering the whole inside of the box including the PCBs. I slammed the lid closed and sprayed the outside of the box. It was literately raining ants and ant eggs so I had to get off the ladder real fast!
Once the "ant rain" had reduced to a drizzle, I opened the box again and sprayed the inside of the lid. This box has a lot more inside so I didn't want to pull all the modules out. This time I left the lid open while the remaining ants all fled the scene. About 30 mins later they seemed to be all gone excepts for a few stragglers. Another spray of Raid around the enclosure exterior was done after closing it up. I'll wait to take it all apart for a full check and clean until the season is done, unless I have issues before then.
TLDR Version:
Have you had issues with ants getting into your controller boxes? How did you deal with them?
