Yes, with termites, it’s not a matter of “If“, it’s a matter of “When”.
Have you ever seen how much damage termites can do to a house?
Between 1 in 3 and 1 in 4 Australian homes gets termites and tragically, most home owners find out only after there has been considerable damage done.
According to the Gold Coast Bulletin, Sunday March 6, 2016:
“timber-munching critters have inundated the Gold Coast this summer with pest control owners saying this has been the busiest season in five years.”
The article went on to add
“People need to make sure they have adequate drainage away from the building and it is also important to keep gardens and foliage away from the house, it is also extremely important to get annual termite inspections done.”
In a recent case, a customer was drilling a hole in a window frame to hang curtains. As soon as he turned the drill on, the bit went straight through the timber and the entire frame collapsed, exposing hundreds of termites.
The scary thing was that the window was on the first floor. Yes, the entire wall of the house was riddled with them and it all had to be replaced.
Studs, bearers, window frame, internal wall sheeting; everything all had to be replaced. They were only 20cm short of being in the roof!
Image what would have happened had they gone unchecked.
Did he have any clues that the house had termites?
None.
And in most cases, until you make a repair and watch the timber crumble around you, see a tell-tale trail of dried mud on your foundations or on a wall; or see moisture where it shouldn’t be, you have no idea. Even a deteriorating timber retaining wall or garden edge close to the house should be treated with suspicion as the damage may be caused by termites.
Here’s another danger area
Any garden beds that touch the house. That’s like giving them an open invitation and leaving the front door open.
Repair bills in the tens of thousands are common, and in most cases, early detection would have minimised or even avoided these huge bills.
(Seriously, if people had any idea how much timber termites eat in a short period of time, and how much the repair bills can be, everyone would live in high rise apartments!)
When you consider the cost of a termite inspection, a couple of hundred dollars against the cost of repairs, having professionals like us conduct an inspection, it is a total no-brainer.
Look, I’m not trying to scare you but if you could see what we see every day, you would do what I recommend and act NOW to book your termite inspection. Every day you leave doing it is another day a thousand mouths are eating your house.
Where do they come from and what’s more, where are they breeding and where are they! (no, let’s not go there!)
They’re horrible, germ-carrying; disease-ridden insects that you don’t want anywhere near you, let alone your kids, your food and your pets.
They’re in your kitchen cupboards, under your fridge and dishwasher; in your wardrobes and all the time just ready to jump out in front of you, or with big ants and spiders to bite you.
If you’re like most people, you’ve got cans or spray bottles of off the shelf products, all of which are aggressively advertised to solve the problem, but they don’t. And that’s because to meet retail and safety requirements, the core ingredients have to be so diluted that they become ineffective.
And if they were all you needed, pest controllers like us wouldn’t need training, licenses and the expensive equipment we need to store and use the more effective products we use.
You can go on buying cans of commercial products and keep having to keep using them and polluting the air your breath with the contents; or you can have us come with professional products that penetrate the places these nasties hide in, killing them once and for all.
I can hear you asking, “Yes, but are these products safe around the house?”
