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"blacklights" found in pet stores, don't work for me
Hi, one of my 2 kitties is peeing on my bed sometimes. He isn't ill,
just nervous kind of guy. It's OK, I use tarp under the sheets and wash the sheets. I want to make sure he doesn't do that elsewhere, on carpets. So I bought the "blacklight/UV" light found in pet stores. It does not seem to work! After he pees on the sheets, I darken the room and use the light to see how it works. Well, it does not - nothing shows up. Nothing shows up when the urine is fresh. Nothing shows up when it's dried. Nothing shows up even when it's night and everything is pitch black. I tried 2 different brands, one of them really big, lots of batteries. Nothing. I look really carefully and follow instructions carefully. Make sure the batteries are new. Nothing, even when I can see and smell the urine myself. So of course this is never going to work on carpet or anywhere else. What's going on? Why don't they work? Is there one urine detector that really works? I have seen this thing AntiIckyPoo UV flashlight - it does not use batteries, but extension cord and electricity from an outlet, and is really expensive $70 (the lights found in pet stores are $30 or less). Is this going to work? Please give me recommendations. Thank you very much. Mark Galeck |
#2
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"blacklights" found in pet stores, don't work for me
In article . com, Mark_Galeck wrote:
Hi, one of my 2 kitties is peeing on my bed sometimes. He isn't ill, just nervous kind of guy. It's OK, I use tarp under the sheets and wash the sheets. I want to make sure he doesn't do that elsewhere, on carpets. So I bought the "blacklight/UV" light found in pet stores. It does not seem to work! After he pees on the sheets, I darken the room and use the light to see how it works. Well, it does not - nothing shows up. Nothing shows up when the urine is fresh. Nothing shows up when it's dried. Nothing shows up even when it's night and everything is pitch black. I tried 2 different brands, one of them really big, lots of batteries. Nothing. I look really carefully and follow instructions carefully. Make sure the batteries are new. Nothing, even when I can see and smell the urine myself. So of course this is never going to work on carpet or anywhere else. What's going on? Why don't they work? Is there one urine detector that really works? I have seen this thing AntiIckyPoo UV flashlight - it does not use batteries, but extension cord and electricity from an outlet, and is really expensive $70 (the lights found in pet stores are $30 or less). Is this going to work? Not all blacklights are the same wavelength. Urine flouresceses at a particular wavelength, and the black lights sold in party stores, etc. is not the right wavelength. I don't have the particulars in front of me which is the correct UV band to light up urine, sorry. I suspect that if you can find a blacklight that is also used to check for counterfeit money, it will probably also work for spotting stains, I believe that they are in the same UV band. But please, I'm not guarantee'ing that, but I am fairly sure about the party type lights not working as I have one as well and it doesn't work on stains. Some gem/rock collecting folks use these as well, might be somewhere to look for a supplier as they will have blacklights in different bands. I believe the urine glows under UB B type lights, the party ones are UV A. $.02 d. |
#3
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"blacklights" found in pet stores, don't work for me
Great! This may be what I needed. For some reason the wavelength is
wrong. Even the ones found in pet stores, could be wrong wavelength. In the meantime, being a guy, I went for "brute force" method (which may be invalidated by your remark). I went to a big hardware store and bought the biggest UV lamps I could find, 80 Watts total, much bigger than anything sold in pet food stores, operated from an outlet, so I also bought a long extension cord. This thing is so bright I better don't walk around with naked skin or I might get sunburned or something I pointed it at my Litter Robot drawer, with urine clumps from 2 different cats (thinking that maybe my aforementioned cat is weird and does not have that particular thing in the urine that makes it show under UV). NOPE. None of the clumps glow even the faintest. Everything else in the bathroom glows like crazy (my bathroom is orderly, but, uhm, not super-clean let's say), but the cat urine clumps - no. OK then, DougD is really on to something and I need to find out the proper wavelength. Quick research on the web finds that the "Urine- off" brand UV light, does advertise that it has the proper wavelength, OK I will try it. Thanks Doug! |
#4
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"blacklights" found in pet stores, don't work for me
Mark_Galeck wrote:
Great! This may be what I needed. For some reason the wavelength is wrong. Even the ones found in pet stores, could be wrong wavelength. In the meantime, being a guy, I went for "brute force" method (which may be invalidated by your remark). I went to a big hardware store and bought the biggest UV lamps I could find, 80 Watts total, much bigger than anything sold in pet food stores, operated from an outlet, so I also bought a long extension cord. This thing is so bright I better don't walk around with naked skin or I might get sunburned or something I pointed it at my Litter Robot drawer, with urine clumps from 2 different cats (thinking that maybe my aforementioned cat is weird and does not have that particular thing in the urine that makes it show under UV). NOPE. None of the clumps glow even the faintest. Everything else in the bathroom glows like crazy (my bathroom is orderly, but, uhm, not super-clean let's say), but the cat urine clumps - no. OK then, DougD is really on to something and I need to find out the proper wavelength. Quick research on the web finds that the "Urine- off" brand UV light, does advertise that it has the proper wavelength, OK I will try it. Thanks Doug! This is a timely discussion for me, so thanks for starting the thread. My one attempt to locate cat urine using a blacklight was unsuccessful, and now I know why. I will also have to get the above mentioned kind, which I suppose is not in pet stores.... I can smell the cat pee, but I can't pinpoint it precisely.... -- Jean B. |
#5
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"blacklights" found in pet stores, don't work for me
In article , "Jean B." wrote:
OK then, DougD is really on to something and I need to find out the proper wavelength. Quick research on the web finds that the "Urine- off" brand UV light, does advertise that it has the proper wavelength, OK I will try it. Thanks Doug! This is a timely discussion for me, so thanks for starting the thread. My one attempt to locate cat urine using a blacklight was unsuccessful, and now I know why. I will also have to get the above mentioned kind, which I suppose is not in pet stores.... I can smell the cat pee, but I can't pinpoint it precisely.... One thing that may be possible, is to spray something more conventional on the area's that are suspect, and the combination of urine and a second material could cause it to flouresce under the cheaper party light type UV lamps. Something with phosphorus in it like laundry soap may work, I'll try and do some experiments as it would be a heck of a lot easier and cheaper than having to hunt down a specific lamp type. The other thing is possibly stealing a trick from the CSI folks.. The reason the cheap lamps don't work isn't nesc. because they aren't causing the urine to glow, it's just that it's a weak flourescense compared to the broad UV of the cheap lamp. By looking for the stain's under something like orange colored glasses, it would cut down on the amount of black (er.. blue) light in the visible, while allowing the shifted light from the stain which would appear in the yellow wavelengths to pass through and be seen. Again, it might be a long shot, but that IS how the UV light is used for spotting fingerprints, the oils in the print glow yellow under the UV. Even bright green from a YAG laser can light up the prints, but that's an awful lot of light!! d. |
#6
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"blacklights" found in pet stores, don't work for me
DougD wrote:
In article , "Jean B." wrote: OK then, DougD is really on to something and I need to find out the proper wavelength. Quick research on the web finds that the "Urine- off" brand UV light, does advertise that it has the proper wavelength, OK I will try it. Thanks Doug! This is a timely discussion for me, so thanks for starting the thread. My one attempt to locate cat urine using a blacklight was unsuccessful, and now I know why. I will also have to get the above mentioned kind, which I suppose is not in pet stores.... I can smell the cat pee, but I can't pinpoint it precisely.... One thing that may be possible, is to spray something more conventional on the area's that are suspect, and the combination of urine and a second material could cause it to flouresce under the cheaper party light type UV lamps. Something with phosphorus in it like laundry soap may work, I'll try and do some experiments as it would be a heck of a lot easier and cheaper than having to hunt down a specific lamp type. The other thing is possibly stealing a trick from the CSI folks.. The reason the cheap lamps don't work isn't nesc. because they aren't causing the urine to glow, it's just that it's a weak flourescense compared to the broad UV of the cheap lamp. By looking for the stain's under something like orange colored glasses, it would cut down on the amount of black (er.. blue) light in the visible, while allowing the shifted light from the stain which would appear in the yellow wavelengths to pass through and be seen. Again, it might be a long shot, but that IS how the UV light is used for spotting fingerprints, the oils in the print glow yellow under the UV. Even bright green from a YAG laser can light up the prints, but that's an awful lot of light!! d. Interesting. How about red glasses? I don't have orange ones, but my daughter has red ones. One obviously needs to locate all of the pee. Yuck! BTW, I did gaze at the lights in the pet stores and noticed they are supposed to be 2-3 inches from the area--which implies one has to be crawling around with the light. (I think I would try to use my daughter's grabber, since I don't much relish crawling all over the place.) Also, the apparently ineffective lights in the pet stores are much more expensive than the one that was recommended in this thread.... -- Jean B. |
#7
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"blacklights" found in pet stores, don't work for me
In article . com, Mark_Galeck wrote:
Great! This may be what I needed. For some reason the wavelength is wrong. Even the ones found in pet stores, could be wrong wavelength. NOPE. None of the clumps glow even the faintest. Everything else in the bathroom glows like crazy (my bathroom is orderly, but, uhm, not super-clean let's say), but the cat urine clumps - no. OK then, DougD is really on to something and I need to find out the proper wavelength. Quick research on the web finds that the "Urine- off" brand UV light, does advertise that it has the proper wavelength, OK I will try it. Thanks Doug! You're welcome. I'm kinda sheepish about this as I really should know the wavelength as that's kinda the biz I'm in (no, I don't go around checking for urine stains). I've been working with visible, IR and UV lasers for the last 20 years, and I can pretty much name most visible wavelengths by their number, but I'm kinda at a loss as to what's out there in UV lamps. I'll try and poke around my resources a bit and see if I can't find the right number. Whether or not that translates into a part number that anyone can phone up a supplier for, well, that's a whole 'nother challenge... d. |
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