hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr4431.txt

Episode: 4431
Title: HPR4431: Thermosol refill challenges
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4431/hpr4431.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-26 00:38:19

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4,431 from Monday the 28th of July 2025.
Today's show is entitled Thermosol Refill Challenges.
It is the 130th show of operator and is about 15 minutes long.
It carries an explicit flag.
The summary is, presenter explores Thermosol Refill Challenges.
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio with your host operating.
So this one is actually going to have show notes.
So Colin or, uh,
you won't have to hurt me.
We're talking about mosquitoes and, uh, all the carts and, uh,
coin, a quarter-based carts or whatever,
token-based carts for shopping and, uh,
Thermosol refills and teaky torches and mosquito dealing with mosquitoes in the south.
I've done a bug episode if you want to go back DIY bug episodes.
This one's about refilling thermosils in my, uh,
trials and tribulations with mosquitoes.
So, um, we had mosquitoes since we bought the house.
2009, they've been terrible.
Every year they're terrible.
Few neighbors are terrible.
But then I can go on the other side of the street and call a sec and never get bit at all.
So I don't know what happened.
Uh, you know, everybody says citronella.
So I started buying torches.
It would last one season, leaving them out.
That would last maybe one season, two seasons.
Um, and they'd rust out.
You buy the fancy ones, they still rust out.
The fancy cans, instead of the plastic, the plastic will dry rot and crack every time
you drop it.
The teaky torches are plastic or the wicker bamboo will dry and rot dry rot.
So don't buy the bamboo.
Don't buy the plastic teaky torch.
Don't buy the metal teaky torch holders.
Don't buy the metal teaky torch cans by a glass or take a old wine bottle.
You can dumpster dive a local Italian store or bottle shop will have, you know, Italian
stores or alcohol places or places that serve wine, lots of wine, maybe a fancy restaurant.
A lot of them have a specific, uh, rug glass recycling bins and you can just take the whole
bag of most sometimes broken, um, bottle wine bottles.
So I do a wine bottle cutting class and I've robbed one of that.
So you can get one bottle and you're buying, excuse me.
I've already recorded this one, but I went back and did decent show notes and did less
rambling.
Hopefully this time around.
Wine bottle torch kit eight pack includes eight long life torch wicks, 13 inches.
I, I don't even know how long the wicks are for the teaky torches.
They're not nearly that long.
I've not even gone through half of a, of a wick.
It's, it snakes down inside of a rum bottle I have.
So basically it's a wick and then it's got the wine bottle piece of metal and then it
has a rubber gasket on it and you just shove the wick in there and you light it and that's
your thing.
So I have two or three of those and it doesn't work, man.
The citronella doesn't really work for me.
It doesn't really do a whole lot of boarding off.
Maybe if you're having a party and you do it beforehand and you feel the whole area with
citronella and you make, you know, everywhere you've got citronella, but it's not a like,
go outside, you'll be fine 15 minutes later, you know, go whatever.
So I gave up on citronella and I tried two products, off clip on, they don't even exist
anymore.
Off for a brief period had a metho, methofruitling, other ingredients.
I'm not even putting it in the show notes because it's a dead up and in where they had
two products.
They had the refill clips, all clip on models.
This says it works on all clip on models, which I guess is true.
The thing about the new clip on models refills is that it doesn't have those little active
ingredient inside of a little thing and you can't just cover it.
It's just like inside of the pad, inside of the pad itself.
The old one that had like a little reservoir, you get, I could put like a piece of tape
over it and that would pertin like, I could keep it longer.
The problem with the, is it didn't work, I don't know what's in it, but it doesn't work.
So I have one more pad, I'm going to keep it just as a, you know, extra thing, but it
doesn't seem to work.
The only thing that seems to work is these heat-based thermosil things that take
you paint.
Now, they're barely expensive, campers use them, hunters use them, they come bare, you
don't get anything, you don't get a clip, the one I, when I bought it didn't have a clip
and they want you to like buy a clip with it, maybe I bought it used, I don't know.
But it didn't have any way to mount it.
So I just had to create a, be creative and do you draw a hole in it or something?
They come with one, maybe two cans of beauty, two cartridges.
The problem with that is they get you on the cartridge, it's just like the razor blades.
Now there's videos online how to refill them, but they're not really intuitive enough.
The problem with the refills is the standard attachment for your butane lighter is not
going to fit.
So you can buy a butane, any of them, it doesn't matter, just what's going to fit in the
hole.
You basically need an adapter that will fit in the hole.
Now you can 3D print one, which I'm a tried, there's a 3D printed one.
You can buy for like two bucks, you can buy a, yeah, butane refills, you know, refills
system, it comes with a bunch of nozzles that fit in the hole.
Now the problem with that is the way these butane cartridges work, at least in my experience,
there's a tube, like a straw, a tube that has a hole in it, that tube goes into the thing
and when you push it down, the fuel goes through the hole and the tube and fills it up.
Right?
The problem with these is there's no hole in the middle.
So when you push down, the air, the fuel doesn't have anywhere to go, there's no where,
it can't go anywhere, it only has to go out the sides.
So after looking at the official 3rd party butane adapters for thermosilvers, I realized
it's basically an attachment that has a slit in the middle so that the fuel can kind
of escape out the sides and fill it up.
So basically what you have is a cylinder in the middle and on the outside, there's a
gap, a gap area of thing.
So it's basically the same as the regular cartridge, a regular filling for a thing but
there's no hole inside of the tube.
So instead of the fuel going through the tube, it has to escape out the sides or one inside
at least.
In this example, it looks like in the metal one, it looks like it's on both sides that
it escapes.
So that's kind of what you don't realize if you're not paying attention.
So I bought the refill things, I bought the fur conversion kit and I'm like, okay, it fits
in the hole but it won't fill up.
And I tried a different nozzle and that didn't work, I tried to just a nozzle and I could
watch the videos and I saw them put an adapter on there so it was a stupid adapter, I look
at the adapter and it's got coming out the sides.
So actually one of the ones I bought has a slit in the side but really all you need is
something that has a hole in it in the middle and then it needs to have a slit on the
side so that the towards the bottom has a slit in it.
And that slit is where the fuel comes out, bleeds out and then goes wraps around the
side of the cylinder and lets the gas go inside.
It's a little hard to explain but essentially you know just a tapered object that can fit inside
the hole that has a slit in it so that the fuel can escape out the sides and go down in
there.
So that's essentially what you make when you're kind of filing your own or whatever.
So if you have problems cut a slit in it and you'll probably be okay.
When you fill them the way the whole thing works is pressurize, right?
When you fill it it's going to have way too much air in there so you'll let out air.
So fill it up, let it give it as much pressure as you possibly can and then when it starts
actually filling up, you want to not fill it up to the top, just look at a complete cartridge.
I mean they're about three, they're about three-fourths full.
So look at a full cartridge, that's where you should fill the line, you maybe even want
to mark it if you want to make it any approved.
The other thing you have to do is actually take the seal out and you can't do this on one
yet to do it on an empty container or else you're going to you know explode butane interface.
So when you're done with a container and it's empty, you complete the empty, you pull the
pin out.
Now don't screw up the O-rings.
If you want to take O-rings off you can pinch an O-ring and squeeze it towards one direction
and it'll create a little bunch, a little scrunch and you can take that little scrunch and
put a Q-tip or a twip, a twofick and pull that O-ring off just in case you think you might
damage it.
But if you just grab the end with a pair of vice grips, you can pull out the middle and
then the YouTube channel shows a, basically a wood screw.
You screw it down in there and you pull out this middle part which is like one, so kind
of weird one-way check valve or something, I don't know what it is.
But you pull this little valve out and then you put the old valve back in there and you
throw away this little one-way check proprietary valve thing.
So that will allow you to refill the cartridge.
I'm thinking it's a one-way check valve so that when you, I don't know what it is but
for whatever reason it's not easy to refill.
So once you've got the little check valve out or whatever they put in there, you smash
it, I don't even use a hammering, they just use the bottom of the table to push it back
in.
And then I filled it up and then it filled up so high, about almost like three thirds
of the way and it was too much, too much pressure.
So a little bit let air out and then I pushed it back down in there enough.
So now I have two full cartridges that have been refilled and I have a crap ton of
Chinese-yum cartridge pads.
Now these pads are, they turn white when they're done.
I swap them out fairly regularly, even if I'm going somewhere new or something, because
I've got a billion of the Chinese-yum ones and I still have some of that original to
thermosol ones.
I have a ton of the original thermosol, too.
So if they're even discolored at all, I'll swap it out.
I'm not going to worry about going through those or the butane.
I don't leave them running, of course, because it is fire.
I left one inside of a bucket with a yard waste and my son left it on and I didn't
know it was on and I put it inside of the bucket and I'm like wondering where it is because
it's fire.
And of course I'm in the garage and I hear this and I don't want to think about it.
And I'm looking, I'm looking, I'm like, okay, well let me check the bucket and it's
in the bucket, face down, on flight on, you know, he heated and it's like right up against
these, you know, drying leaves or drying things that I pulled from the weeds that I pulled
from the yard.
So, you know, it is fire, be careful, don't hurt yourself.
But I will post in the show notes the refill cartridge things what they look like so you
can see.
And again, cut a slight cut in it so that the fuel can go past the, the, the, the, the
converter or the adapter.
And then the eight-kack of the torchwicks, you just get a, you know, an old wine bottle
and, you know, zip tie it to a stick, fiberglass stick or something.
I had them on the ground, it's not super safe, you got kids running around, if you have
running a party or something, you don't want to put a torch on the ground because kids
will try to walk over it or people will try to walk around it and knock it over and then
you got a fire on your hands.
Now, the last thing we'll talk about is if you're in all the person, they 25 cents for
the cart.
Now, this is a printed out, all the cart took in.
I didn't like this one because it's long and maybe you want it long.
I don't know.
I, I picked between this one and this guy.
The one, the first one in the link is, it's kind of like a paddle, it looks like a paddle.
The second one is more slimline and it's very thin and it looks more like a RFID token
thing.
So I'll put that both of those in the show notes.
I haven't tried either one but I gave my wife one because she goes all the other time.
Anyways, hope that helps you out.
Next time you think you want to replace something or whatever, look on Thingiverse.
There might be a, oh that's cute, it looks like a, a phallic key.
All the, all the trolley token removable and it basically looks like a phallic symbol.
And that's kind of funny.
Anyways, I'll put those in the show notes but if you have some kind of trinket or thing
or object that needs to be replaced and you think it's, just try to think if you can
3D print whatever this is, this part is to replace it and chances are if it's a replaceable
part, you can 3D print it.
Because I've been lucky here lately, the fast, fast, a few hundred times I've tried to
fix something.
I'll be like, you know what?
I wonder if there's a 3D print like if you can think of it, somebody printed it.
Whether or not it's going to stay together or whatever and that's a different story.
But anyways, I hope that helps somebody out if you're, you know, you're doing stuff
for the holidays and you're doing whatever, go back and check my bug episode by yourself
a nice backpack sprayer, do your own bug spray, it saves you a ton of money, do your neighbors
for 20 bucks, that's what I used to do, now I know it doesn't make any difference but
for you it might.
Anyways, take it easy, have a good one, stay safe and be the, what does it be, be good
to people because you're the only you you have or something, I don't know what is, that's
what the brake sec talks about, it's probably a brake security, braking down security is a good
podcast for information security, anyways, take it easy, have a good one, record an
episode later just by.
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