Odor control and pet waste kind of go hand in hand – with one, you get the other. But it’s not only the waste that causes the odors. Pet urine is probably more potent to the nose than the poop.
In this post, I will be comparing three different odor control products and will try to come up with pros and cons of all three. This is by no means a government funded study lasting for 15 years and costing millions of dollars only to discover that dog poop stinks! I wish the government would give me just a few hundred thousand so I can tell them, “yes, dog poop stinks!”
“This should be fun… watching my wife sniff the floor!”
Since that’s not gonna happen any time soon, let’s get on with the tests.
The three products I’m testing are called Urine Off, Odormute and Farm360. I’ll be conducting three different tests: One will be in my own bathroom, one will be on my garage floor, (that my Jack Russell Terrier, Oreo, has kindly marked for us), and the last one will be on artificial grass, (that my Jack Russell Terrier is suppose to use.)
In all fairness, Oreo does use his grassy toilet, I just removed it for a few days so he would go on the floor.
Now, I’m not a photographer, so I can’t take pictures in the dark to show you my findings, so you’ll just have to take my word for it, or conduct your own tests. Why the dark? Simple. Urine shows up greenish yellow under an ultra violet light at 365-385 nm. That’s nanometers. Leave it to engineers to come up with two initials for a single word. Kind of like EMP – electromagnetic pulse. (Two words, three initials.) But I digress, back to the experiment. The ultraviolet light will be able to detect the urine, but as for the ammonia, well, I’ll just have to use my nose, but I’ll also use my wife’s nose since her sense of smell is more sensitive than mine.
Urine Off comes ready to use, the other two are in concentrate form and you have to mix them with water. Odormute is ready to use in about 10 minutes and has about a 4 hour life span. Farm360 has to “ferment” for 2 to 4 hours before it’s ready to use. Both are mixed with warm water.
Next step is to mark off 5 different areas on each of the test surfaces. Why 5? One for each of the products I’m testing, one for bleach and one for my wife’s favorite, Pinesol. Sort of for control purposes.
The first experiment will be to apply all 5 products according to their instructions and leave them to dry. The next test will be to use all five products and let them soak for a few minutes then wipe them off with a towel or sponge depending on what I have available. After each application, we’ll look at the areas with the ultraviolet light and compare visual cleanliness. Then I’ll try to talk my wife into sniffing all the areas for the odor she like to complain about. This oughta be fun! Not the experiment… watching my wife sniff the floor!
Stay tuned for part 2