How to Keep Mosquitoes Out of Our Kiddie Pool
Tip
Search online for a pool cover that will fit your kiddie pool. If you can’t find one, and have no way of keeping your pool covered when you’re not around, it’s best to empty the water each night.
Warning
As you know, unattended children and pools do not mix. A covered pool can be just as dangerous. Kids can step on the seemingly solid cover and drown just as easily as if the cover was not there.
Barring building a fortress around your house, or your kiddie pool, keeping mosquitoes at bay during the summer months could be a challenge. The key to successfully eliminating mosquitoes from your kiddie pool is knowing a little something about these relentless, blood-sucking insects, particularly, what uninhabitable and intolerable environment could be concocted to repel them.
How to Keep Mosquitoes Away
Empty your kiddie pool each night. If it’s a small pool that can easily be refilled, your best bet is to refill it each day you use it with fresh water. Mosquitoes love stagnant water, meaning water that does not flow or circulate. Your kiddie pool is the perfect breeding colony for those nasty pests. Be sure to turn the pool upside down so that rainwater does not get trapped.
Cover your pool when the kids are finished playing for the day. Whenever the pool is not being used, meaning lunch breaks and overnight, keep the pool covered with a fitted pool cover.
Keep the area around the pool free of debris that mosquitoes like. Old tires and children’s beach buckets collect water, which attracts mosquitoes. Also look out for tall, overgrown grass and small dips or holes in your lawn from an overactive, digging dog or kids playing construction games.
Clean your gutters regularly. Clogged gutters trap water and give mosquitoes a great place to lay their eggs. Unless your gutter is about a mile or more away from your kiddie pool, mosquitoes will find their way to the pool with no trouble whatsoever.
Plant a garden. Basil, lemongrass, citronella grass, and catnip (the plant, not the cat aphrodisiac) are known as natural mosquito repellant. Do some research on your location and see which plants grow easily where you live. Keep the kiddie pool close to your new flowerbed.
Related Articles
References
Resources
Writer Bio
Shannon Marks started her journalism career in 1994. She was a reporter at the "Beachcomber" in Rehoboth Beach, Del., and contributed to "Philadelphia Weekly." Marks also served as a research editor, reporter and contributing writer at lifestyle, travel and entertainment magazines in New York City. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in literature from Temple University.
