As we continue to spruce up the yard and prepare to enjoy it all summer, keeping the bugs at bay was a top priority.   If you’ve ever visited Alaska you know that our mosquitos are massive and excessively numerous.  We did some DIY tiki torches last year using wine bottles based on this Pinterest idea, but since we wanted them near the deck and didn’t have a spot to hang them from we created some simple stands with a closet rod and tuna cans like this tutorial.

The wine bottles fit perfectly in the tuna can and were certainly pretty, but I was constantly worried that the dogs would break the glass and as the temps cooled in the fall the fluid started to freeze overnight.  We took them down when we closed up the deck for the season, but left a few of the stands out over the winter.  The stands didn’t fair well with the weather and were looking pretty beat up by the time spring rolled around so I knew we needed a better option.

That’s when I spotted this idea on Pinterest.  I showed it to the Hubs and he liked it so we picked up the supplies we needed on our next trip to the hardware store and used the handy cutter from our recent Insulator Garden Art project to cut the pipe as needed.  Everything went together very quickly and soon we were ready to add the wicks and fuel.

The Hubs did swap out the clamps we’d used to secure them to the deck since the copper pipe was a much smaller diameter than the closet rods had been.  But we were able to reuse the wood blocks he’d attached to the deck to keep them flush with the deck boards.

We both like that the slimmer profile of these torches help keep the view open and there’s no glass to worry about.  We have found that the design doesn’t hold much fuel so they do run out every few days, but we keep the tiki fuel on hand in the BBQ table so it’s easy to refill.

We placed several around the perimeter of the deck to create a “no-fly” zone for bugs, which seems to work fairly well.  Hint – there’s a sneak peek at two of the projects I’ll be working on finishing up this weekend in the photo below! 🙂

What do you think of our new and improved tiki torch design?  They will certainly get plenty of use this weekend!