As long as a house has wood, drywood termites are a risk.
These tiny, tan-coloured insects love nothing more than to squeeze into the smallest of cracks in a beam, floorboard or piece of furniture, before feasting and breeding.
The nature of a home renovation makes termites a common find, particularly when inspecting roofs and attic space, or when furniture and built-in cabinets are moved or removed.
How can you tell whether or not you have termites in your home? What can happen if you leave them untreated? Can they be prevented? And, is it true that Bermuda cedar is immune to termites? We spoke to Bermuda Pest Control’s operations manager, Justin Tavares, to find out.
Tell tale signs
“The first thing you’re going to notice with termites is the frass,” Mr Tavares said. Frass, the technical term for termite droppings, is undigested wood.
“It almost looks like sand, but under a microscope they’re cylindrical. You’ll see little piles of it.
“The other sign that accompanies that are what we call kick-out holes, which are very small holes in the wood, and that’s where the termites are pushing the droppings out of.”
Over time, as the colony develops and expands, homeowners may start to see what Mr Tavares calls swarming termites.
“Those are the winged ones, that people are very familiar with, that you see in the summertime. You leave your light on in the kitchen and you start seeing some sort of insects swarming in. Nine times out of ten it’s either a termite or a flying ant.”
If you’re not sure, Mr Tavares recommended calling a pest control expert to check. “We do free inspections,” he said.
Potential damage
If termites are confirmed, they need to be dealt with straight away to prevent further damage. While they are most active during the warmer months, left unchecked, they will get exponentially worse as, unlike ants and cockroaches, they keep going all year round.
“Termites, because they live in the wood, are constantly going, they’re constantly eating, and that’s going to, over time, degrade the wood.”
He recalled two examples of this. One where a homeowner had to get their wooden beams reinforced because of termite damage, and another, where an outdoor pergola, with very thick square beams, snapped with only a gentle push because the termites had chewed through it so badly.
“It was essentially paper at that point,” he said. “They don’t eat the outside, they eat the inside, so all the soft sections of the wood had been chewed through and what was left was basically nothing.
“Thankfully nothing happened, but that was an accident waiting to happen.”
Action
If a house has termites, the only way to get rid of them is fumigation.
“It’s a two-day process. We come out, put a tent on, shoot the gas inside. The next day it comes down and you’re back in that evening,” he said.
Once tented, no people, plants or pets can be in the house, and any food not in unopened, manufactured containers, has to be removed or put into provided bags. All cupboards, doors, drawers, containers and storage bags have to be open.
“We want to make sure there’s good airflow throughout the entire structure. We don’t want the gas getting trapped anywhere,” he said.
While other treatments are available, Mr Tavares said fumigation is the only one that is “100 per cent guaranteed”.
Conventional spraying doesn’t work because it only hits the outside of the wood. Termites live deep within the wood. With fumigation, gas gets into all the nooks and crannies to kill all of the active termites.
Prevention
If you are investing in a home renovation or have paid to have it fumigated, you want to do everything possible to protect it from a future termite infestation.
Unfortunately, the only way to guarantee your house will be termite free forever is to have no wood in it at all.
If this isn’t feasible, Mr Tavares recommended taking any wood products to be treated before installing them.
“We always recommend that wood is treated and fumigated before it gets put into the house,” he said. “Whether that’s furniture, cabinetry, flooring. The last thing you want is to find out that those cabinets that you just purchased had termites in them and now you have termites in your house.
“We’ve had people bring in a new house worth of wood and say: ‘Can you get this treated?’ That’s to give piece of mind that wood isn’t going in with termites.”
It could potentially save a lot of money too.
“A single piece of furniture, for example, we charge $50 to fumigate it. A house is in the thousands. It’s a lot cheaper and a lot easier to get the one piece done that you’re not sure of, than to have the house fumigated.”
The other prevention method is exclusion, which basically means fortifying your house against these tiny beasts as best you can.
“Make sure that everything is sealed tight,” he said. “Windows, doors, the vents in the roofs that we have to help airflow, there needs to be very fine mesh that they can’t get through.
“If it’s anything where they’re going to have access to it, making sure that it is covered in either a varnish or a paint will help stop them, but that does degrade over time and cracks can form and they can get in that way.
“Any crack in the wood is an opportunity for a termite to enter in.”
Bermuda cedar
There is a “local myth”, that termites won’t get into Bermuda cedar, but debunked Mr Tavares: “They absolutely will go into cedar.”
He did concede, however, that it isn’t their wood of choice.
“They don’t prefer cedar, they like to go for softer woods, but they absolutely will infest cedar if that’s the option available to them.”
