Organic Answers Column – August 23, 2023 – Orange Oil

Orange Oil – Use This Powerful Oil Carefully

My retired judge friend, Al Cercone, recently helped me with an electrical problem that taught us both an interesting lesson. The LED lights had stopped working at our pool gazebo. Still a licensed electrician from his previous profession, Al likes to help his friends with electrical issues.

He came over, did some rewiring magic in the switches area and things were working perfectly as he drove away.

Week later – none of the lights worked.

Al doesn’t like unfinished projects and mysteries he can’t figure out. He rewired the switches to use max power and turn all lights and fans on together. That worked but he still couldn’t figure out why the good quality switches weren’t working individually.

He took one of the suspect switches home and dissected it. Orange stuff inside. I had to admit that I had sprayed orange oil “around” the switches to control the ants.

This shot shows the carbon that burned onto the connectors. The shot with the silver connectors is
after orange oil was used to clean then.

Guess I hadn’t been as careful as I thought. Orange oil is a great organic pest control product – but – keep it away from your electrical equipment.

This column illustrates the electrical problem experience told on last week’s radio show. For the
whole story, listen to the second hour podcast, starting at 4:30 – 10:30.

The gazebo where the ants got into a switch.