As more and more people say goodbye to city life in search of adventure on the open road, there is one annoyance that may put a dampener on life in the great outdoors — bugs. But one caravan adventurer has shared a “super cheap” hack that will help keep pests away and all it takes is a quick trip to Bunnings.
Impressively, Luke and his partner Amanda are building their own off-grid caravan set-up “from scratch”. During their trial phase, Luke told Yahoo News Australia how sitting outside of their caravan at nighttime resulted in “loads of bugs” being attracted to the built-in white lights on their vehicle’s awning.
Wanting to do something about it, former optometrist Luke grabbed some yellow electric tape and lined the white LED strips with it. “Changing the white to yellow with insulation electrical tape was a super easy solution,” he said. A roll of the tape costs just $2.58 at Bunnings.
$2 Bunnings hack to keep bugs away from caravan setup
Those who viewed Luke’s hack were left surprised, with many commenting just how “impressed” they were, with some even jesting that he was a “genius”.
While many responded that red would be a better colour to detract bugs, the former optometrist explained that red has the “lowest spectral sensitivity” for human eyes in the dark. “So red lights are really dim and not much point in having the lights on in this case,” he explained. “This is where the yellow works as a good compromise. It works by the bugs not being able to see it as well so they aren’t attracted to the light.”
Testing out the lights, Luke said it “definitely made a difference with the number of bugs” adding that he noticed “hardly any” after using the tape. “[It’s] so much nicer for sitting outside in summer,” he said.
Couple build caravan ‘from scratch’
Luke told Yahoo that he and his partner Amanda have been building their caravan from scratch and documenting the process on their YouTube channel.
“We are currently on a 5-week trip around the South Island of New Zealand,” he said. “We are still testing out different things on the caravan and the 5-week trip is definitely doing that.”
Caravanning and camping holidays are big business in Australia with $14.3 billion spent in 2023, exceeding pre-Covid levels.
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