Every now and then the Aldi Aisle of Shame has knockoffs of these too.
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That, but keep one’s free thumb over the overflow drain
Also: I found this left over toddler’s clothes hanger (size 4T), it happens to be exactly the right size for the cuff end of a grown-up pair of pants
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You should never use baking soda and vinegar together. Soda is basic, vinegar is acidic, and together they just neutralize each other and create a fizz from carbon dioxide.
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I tend to use one or the other, depending on the problem, for exactly that reason, but I thought I’d try the combination with very hot water. It certainly didn’t work for me.
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Not exciting, just very useful info.
…and candles are too expensive acrost The Pond, too, also.
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For the unburned wax that you don’t want to throw away, It’s crazy easy to melt it in an oven at a low setting and pour it into a new candle with a longer wick that needs to be trimmed, i do this all the time 
ideally you’d want it to be the same type of scent for the candle
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I always thought it was because the wick was too small. TIL
I don’t know how you would deal with a fat candle without a jar to contain it. In my experience the wick forms a deep crater until it melts though one side, causing a tsunami of molten wax.
Re snuffers, we use a few tealights at Xmas, and I always found it hard to blow them out without blasting hot wax in all directions. Here’s a couple of snuffers I made to keep things contained.
The bottom one is a proof of concept made from the end of a frozen orange juice container and galvanized wire. It works fine but that’s about it.
The other is sort of a blend of old and new recycled tech. It’s made from the center hub of an old hard drive (the big old ones about the size of a fat paperback book) and a rusty spike from an old logging road bridge in Killarney Park, Ontario.
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I was adding some weather stripping to the back door. Placed some wrong, ripped the sticky bit off and some of the wood came with it.
A few minutes later and I’ve found several places with only a thin veneer of wood. Looks like termites.
The damage appears to be limited to that corner 
it also appears old. But we stopped messing with it until we can get a professional in to assess things.
I am upset. Every spring, during termite dispersement season, I go thru the expense and hassle of treating most of the dirt around our foundation with nematodes specifically tailored to kill termites. My husband tried to comfort me that maybe all my effort is why the damage appears limited.
I’m casting about with friends and acquaintances for recommendations on reliable pest control companies. A friend has a recommendation for a handyman to get the doorjamb (and door, since I hate that ugly thing) replaced once the termite issues has been dealt with. At least we found the issue and I get a new door without any gaps eventually
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Ugh, sorry to hear about that worrisome problem! Yeah, termites can of course be quite the silent homewrecker.
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Various neighbors in the Hill Country have had success with these folks:
You’re likely going to want a full, exhaustive inspection.
Our own pest management guy Dr. Faye (his last name rhymes with “sigh”) may be retired now. He was very good at what he did, and is a PhD entomologist. And a decent djembe drummer.
https://commonsensepestmanagement.com/contact-us/
https://commonsensepestmanagement.com/
(oh nice he has some good Yelp ratings)
He certainly got results for us with a permethrin (a synthetic pyrethrin) and it was a Big Fkn Hammer because we did indeed have termites. We lived in a Wildland Interface thingy full of bugs. It was a less toxic approach, given some of the truly scary termiticides out there.
If you call him, please tell him I sent you.
Termites are always a total PITA no matter what stage you find them in, near your dwelling or in it. If you haven’t already, pull everything away from the house (no leaning things against the house’s exterior walls, period). Even if it’s something seemingly innocuous like a stack plastic shutters on ground, but leaning against your house. A shed of any material including plastic that is too close to the house, like right up against an exterior wall of the house. Those dang termites love cover. I have seen them make mud tunnels up a cement foundation, under a wooden deck, until they can get up to where the stud-wall is located, then go in sideways through a weephole.
Any place where wood touches soil is conducive conditions for termites. An old wooden deck with no “wood treatment” chems, a trellis holding a climbing vine, a fence or fencepost attached to the side of the house but also with an earthed footing (or even concrete). Wood piles for a fire place or a chimenea? move 'em farther away if they are close to the house/foundation. Etc.
After you yank potential habitat away from your hogan, see if you can get a piece of rebar or a sharp spade and do a little prospecting, just to see if you can find where they are coming in.
Last tip: fire ants eat termites. All termites. Consider letting some fire ant mounds build up near or next to your house. No, I am not kidding. It works. And I learned it from Dr. Faye.
Good luck.
ETA: added some more facts
ETA: typos
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Mmmm…How much for one rib?
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Thank you for the recommendations. We’ve used chem-free in the past to try and manage the fire ants. I wasn’t satisfied with how many mounds they missed when they visited so we stopped the service. We were planning to have them back to dust the attic.
We didn’t have them do much of anything else. We have a very lively gecko and spider population and though it baffled the pest company, I didn’t want them treating the whole foundation with chemicals. Maybe that was a mistake
Removing everything near the house was one of the first things we did when we moved in. Though it took a while to get the weird bush-trees on the front bed ripped out. I don’t remember what they were called, but they weren’t native and were way too large for the bed. Nice roadway for squirrels rats to reach the eves. It was a huge job.
Part of what is so weird about that area having termites is that the patio is entirely cement. No wood touches the house and the ground anywhere else either. It makes me worry the damage we found is the tip of the iceberg.
I am always looking out for mud tubes on the foundation when I’m in the yard. We have all the foundation, all the way around, clear for exactly this reason. All the weepholes in the brick are stuffed with copper netting too.
Re: fire ants. I had no idea the assholes were useful for anything at all. We keep getting a crew of them moving in under the cement patio twice a year. I was going to use the Garrett Juice and orange oil treatment you’d previously suggested once it warms up again. I was hoping it would make the area unattractive to nest in for a while. Maybe they killed the termites?
I’m hoping it was a small infestation, it’s gone, and it happened under the watch of the previous owners.
We do have neighbors storing firewood right next to their houses. A house 4 doors down has it stacked between the wood pillars on the front patio. Would be so easy for termites in the front garden bed to get into that firewood without being seen and then chew their way into the house through those pillars.
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Texas will always have termites.
All one can hope for is that they don’t choose your house, because you have indeed made their lives harder than your neighbors have.
That orange oil recipe is a broad-spectrum 'cide that will decimate what it touches: earthworms, ticks, beetle grubs, grubs and larvae generally, ants, etc. … anything in the soil that you’re drenching.
The good news is that it breaks down fast into biologically useful if not nutritive constituents. The bad news is that it breaks down really fast so you don’t get coverage for months, just a few days.
If your friendlies, the nematodes, have eaten up all the termites, then yeah, they aren’t going to stick around. They will migrate to wherever their food sources are. On some level, having neighbors who are creating uh conducive conditions for their target prey [termites] is doing you a favor, because then your friendlies don’t starve and may be able to maintain some baseline population. I am not a nematologist. I don’t know if maybe these specific nematodes go into stasis, or hibernation, or something, if they don’t get enough to eat.
The other thing I have learned over the years about nematodes is that they have a difficult time surviving in super dry soil. Yea verily even the wee microscopic nematodes. And if there’s one thing the Texas sun and Texas droughts are good at, it’s drying out soil. I get it that re-applying is really the only way to be sure you even have any nematodes local enough to you to do the job.
I applaud your efforts to ranch your biological allies near your foundation, to water them in, and to be one of the few who aren’t punking the groundwater and other cool critters on your property with heavy-duty chemistry.
ETA: clarifiers
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I figure the nematodes probably die out every year, so I reapply in the spring when the termites are swarming. Because, like you said, Texas will always have termites.
We don’t completely stop watering during the summer because the trees need it and it’s bad to let the clay completely dry out and contract around the foundation. But we don’t water much.
The termites will definitely find easier eats at the neighboring houses. Or all the wood fencing! We had a single squirrel in the attic last year. The goal was to close things up so it was easier for it to nest elsewhere.
It’s good the orange oil will break down quickly, given it is toxic to all the other bugs. I guess I will just have to keep watching that area and reapply when the fire ants move back in. It should still be better than the fire ant poison powder and baits that only work maybe half the time.
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