Dirt Dobbers and How Best to Protect your Oliver from Them

[dougi]

I live out in the boondocks in Central Texas, where the deer and the dirt dobbers (is that the way it's spelled?) play. Has anyone else had to protect your trailer from these pest, who go into any and all small cavities they can get into and build large nests of firm dirt, firmly attacked to whatever they can find, messing up things in placed you can't even reach to clean out?

 

If so, please share what you have done and how well it has worked for you. I'm going to have to do any and everything I can to protect my trailer from them.

[mountainborn]

Screens and covers are what we use. Even then there are times that we will find a problem directly related to a dirt dobber stoppage. Most of the time a blast from a water hose clears it right up though.

The screens and the covers are readily available from most mail order supply places. Our first stop after leaving Hohenwald was Camping World where we could pick the right screens from a large selection that was on hand. The refrigerator, water heater and furnace screens work well, but the cover over the air conditioner is marginal, likely because of the fit or age of the elastic. Or, maybe because it is more difficult to put on right while on a ladder ? The tire covers seem to gather wasps and dirt dobbers, but they pull right off before a trip and the insect nest goes with them. Most of the time the insects have evacuated the tire covers by the time we get back from a trip, but sometimes we have to deal with them.

[dougi]

Have you found that some type screens are better and easier to apply than others (aluminum, fiber, plastic, wire)? What type of fasteners do you use (glue, screws, epoxy).

 

Maybe these matters will become obvious, once I get to take a look at the trailer and the openings it has that dirt dobbers could enter. The primary place they enter my existing trailer is the vent for the fridge. Then they can build nest that are way up in the cavity and can't be reached. I would be reluctant to spray water up there, hoping to hit and remove a nest I couldn't even see. But I bet you have that covered so they can't enter.

 

We too will take a trip up to Nashville to Camping World to pick up some things we will need for our new trailer, after we spend a couple of days near Hohenwald.

 

Thanks for the reply.

 

Doug

[mountainborn]

The Nashville CW is the one we went to. It is on the North Loop. You drive right past the CW and come back to it on the frontage road. There are several good places to eat nearby. The screens we decided on are stainless steel and attach with a spring that holds them tight.

The service Manager looked our Ollie over and complimented it on being so well thought out. He helped with the selection to insure we got the correct screens. While we were there we had a set of road wings installed on our Jeep Wrangler tow vehicle, to keep road debris from impacting the front of Ollie.

[mountainborn]

OOpz, DougI, I forgot to mention, there is a small tool that comes with the screens that you use to quickly hook the screens in place. It comes in each screen package.

[herm]

Forgive my ignorance...what exactly are 'dirt dobbers'? About the only worries I have is keeping the wasps out in the summer, and keeping the mice out in the winter.

[dougi]

Dirt Dobbers are a type of stingless (I think) wasp that builds its nest of dirt rather than a paper, as stinging wasp do. Their nest are for a single wasp, rather than for a colony. Once they build the nest and fill it with larva and the hosts food items, they seal the tubes and abandon the nest. In a few weeks, the larva pupate, eat, grow, and eventually chew through the mud wall of their nest and fly off.