I write this with a good bit of personal experience. This is one that I would not wish on anyone, however, if you find yourself in this position, all is not lost.We managed to repair the damage, although at a fair amount of time and money and make the house livable again.

We purchased our home and had a home inspector do a structural inspection. The inspector himself was one that was recommended by the real estate agent. First mistake. I should have done a little research and come up with my own home inspector. Second mistake, the guy showed up and I had a bad feeling. He was not the image of professionalism that I was expecting. Always listen to your gut instinct. He kind of bumbled around and checked things off on a list, but couldn’t find access to some of the crawl spaces under the additions on the house. I looked over the property disclosure statement that the seller had filled out, it mentioned a few things, but nothing on termites. Third mistake, taking somebody’s word on something (property disclosure statement) which has no real legal standing. Strike three.

That was a hard lesson to learn, but a well remembered one. The result is I learned a good deal about termites, how to discover them, kill them and prevent them from returning.

Evidence of termites

There are two main types of termites that effect structures, subterranean and drywood.

For drywood termites, the first sign of trouble is when you spot small round holes accompanied by piles of very fine wood dust. This usually signifies an active infestation. You can also sometimes find these insects crawling around outside of their holes, they are small white ant like insects. These termites nest in the wood they are eating, so there may be few outward signs of infestation.

For subterranean termites, the first sign of trouble is often a “tube” that extends up from the soil to a wood part of the house. Subterranean termites need to control the temperature and humidity of their surroundings, thus they build these tubes to connect their nest to their food source. Remove the tube as soon as you see it. Call an exterminator. Pray.

Termite Damage

To look for termite damage, use a flat head screwdriver. With some amount of force, try to push the end of the screwdriver into the wood members. When you do this, you should hear a sharp “thud” and the end of the screwdriver should not penetrate the wood by more than 1/32 to 1/16th of an inch. This is a sign that the wood is good. Do this every 12 to 24 inches on all exposed wood members, especially in the basement or crawl space.

If the screwdriver sinks into the wood deeply and makes a dull “thap” sound, there may be a problem. Move the screwdriver around a little bit and very fine brown sawdust comes out, or the wood comes apart and you can see bore marks and evidence of tunnels, it is most likely termite damage. Looks something like this:

This is the bottom of a 2×8 sandwiched between two other undamaged 2×8’s.  This is fairly typical of the damage that you would see.  The other 2×8’s on either side are undamaged.  This will be repaired with epoxy and cross bolting to the other 2×8’s.  This is an inactive infestation that has been previously killed by fumigation.

This is typical of the scraps and fine sawdust material that you can remove from a termite damaged wood member.  It is long and stringy with lots of small tunnels and comes apart easily with a screwdriver or wood chisel.

Once you have discovered termites, it is time to take action. Those little critters are voracious eaters and will do significant structural damage quickly if unchecked.

Treatment

You have to call an exterminator and have the entire house fumigated. This is the only way to ensure that all of the termites have been killed at once. It usually involves wrapping the house in a tarp for several days while pesticides are applied within. Obviously, you can’t live there while this is going on, so you will have to find a place to stay. For us, we did not find any active infestations, I think the previous owner had them taken care of.

I also recommend treating all exposed interior wood with a borate type solution such as TIMBOR. Borate salts are great for controlling termites as it is poisonous to them and will often kill an entire colony if enough borate treated wood is brought back. Borate salts are also good for controlling carpenter ants who will not eat wood treated with it.

Prevention

Inspection is key to preventing termite infestations. Regularly have the house inspected for signs of termites. A well built house will have several preventive measures already in place. The first is there should be a minimum of 6 inches of exposed concrete between the soil line and any wood part of the house. More is preferable. Most new construction will have termite barriers installed around the footing and foundation to insure that termites don’t come up the inside of the foundation into the house.

The sill plate and rim joist should be pressure treated where the building code allows. Make sure the soil around the house is well drained, remove any dead and decaying wood material from around the foundation.

Using TIMBOR or similar product to treat exposed wood members in basements and crawlspaces. This is a borate salt type material that is relatively non-toxic, long lasting, and a good defense against termites and other wood destroying insects.

I will go into repairing damaged wood in the next post.

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