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We had a small problem at the old house, wasps had started to build a nest in a corner of the roof, flying in and out via a small gap in the facia board. This is right next to the drive and I spotted them yesterday when laying the gravel, and as it's right next to the entrance to the house there was a high risk of getting stung later in the year, when they tend to get more aggressive. Last time we had a similar problem, on the other side of the house, above our bedroom window, I didn't spot it until late in the summer, by which time the nest was the size of a football up in the loft and we could hear the noise in the bedroom underneath. I had to pay a bloke from the council around £50 to come out and deal with it, after my own attempt to puff insecticide powder in the hole resulted in my getting multiple stings (no fun when your up a ladder). This time I did a bit of digging around on the web and came across this gadget: http://waspnestkiller.co.uk/acatalog/Dustick-High-Reach-Dust-Powder-Applicator-dustick.html for close on £200. Looking at it in use (there are Youtube videos of people using it) it seemed ideal, as you can stay on the ground and just poke the nozzle in the hole and pump in insecticide powder. I wasn't going to pay £200, so last night I went and had a look to see what I had lying around. I found a length of 1 1/4" solvent waste pipe, an 1 1/4" solvent straight joiner and a screw on solvent end cap. I also had some 50mm diameter grey PVC bar, some 6mm brass pipe, a length of 25mm PVC pressure pipe (20mm bore), a very low blow off pressure fuel-type non-return valve and a Schrader valve with a 1/8" BSP thread on it. All the parts were glued together with ordinary pipe solvent cement, which works just as well on the bits of PVC that I turned up. So, this is roughly what I made up. First the drawing of the two ends: The way this works is that you unscrew the top with the brass pipe, and fill the bit of waste pipe with insecticide powder. This doesn't need to me marketed as wasp killer (I found it hard to buy wasp killer powder in the local garden centre) it just needs to be a powder containing around 1% or so permethrin. Ant powder is usually the cheapest way to buy the stuff, and it works very well against any form of insect (including beneficial ones, like bees, so use it with caution). With the top part full of powder you can screw the lid with the brass tube on, as shown in the photos before (taken after use): When assembled, the whole thing looks like this: It could be made a lot longer, but our house is a bungalow so I cut the 25mm pipe down to make it easier to handle. The non-return valve in the base of the upper section just stops powder going down the 25mm pipe - not sure whether this was needed, I think I could probably have got away without the bit of 1 1/4" waste pipe, but it is easier to pour powder into the larger opening. Finally this is a close up of the Schrader valve at the lower end: To use this I connected a tyre inflater to the Schrader valve, that was connected to my compressor (at around 90 psi). The brass nozzle was poked into the hole where the wasps were coming in and out and the air trigger quickly pulled to blow almost the entire contents of the powder container neatly into where their next was. I then beat a hasty retreat, as permethrin tends to get wasps a bit mad for a few minutes, before they snuff it. I went out half an hour later and there was no sign of wasps at all, other than some dead ones on the ground. Best of all, there was very little sign of white powder when I'd sprayed the stuff in, as unlike the puffer bottles, this gadget squirts a high velocity narrow stream of dust directly into any hole. The only thing I had to buy was a bottle of ant killer powder for around £2.50, and I only used around half of it. The rest was made from "may come in handy bits", plus the use of my small bench lathe. It took me less than an hour to make - the longest bit was waiting a couple of hours to make sure the solvent cement had gone off, before I could have a go at using it. If anyone wants to borrow it they are welcome. I think it would work every bit as well with something like a bicycle track pump as a compressor, as it doesn't need a lot of air (a 1 second burst was about all it took to empty the container).