Top Five Effective Ways to Get Rid of Termites Yourself

Although termites are only small, they can cause a huge amount of damage to your home due to the large sizes of their colonies. They eat wood and so can destroy furniture, fittings and the very basis of your home, causing thousands of dollars’ worth of damage and even making the property uninhabitable.

You need to take action before the problem becomes too bad. The good news is that you can kill termites yourself providing you don’t delay until the infestation is too big.

Things to Consider when Getting Rid of Termites

Before you begin treating termites in your house, you need to properly identify the problem. Termites are basically of two main types — subterranean termites that live in soil near your home and drywood termites that live only in wood. The former are the most common and cause the most damage.

You can usually establish if you have a problem by inspecting furniture as well as wood beams and joists in crawl spaces. You can push a screwdriver into beams or tap the wood to test for hollowness. You may also see holes in wood or notice that floorboards are sagging, which is a serious sign.

Subterranean termites build mud tubes that they use to move from their nest to the wood of your house. So, if you know where they are, you’ll have a better chance of killing termites and eradicating the problem.

For a do-it-yourself approach, there are five main courses of action:

1. Chemicals. You can get these online or from your local hardware store. Many of them contain Bifrenthrin that you can also obtain and spray onto the ground. It’s also possible to use an insecticide in foam, liquid or powder form Fipronil is useful for small infestations.
2. Bait Stations. These can be inserted in the ground at intervals around your property and filled with wood or paper treated with poison that has a delayed effect. Termites take the poison back to the nest and kill others in the colony..
3. Sump Oil. Painting timber that is in contact with the soil with Sump oil, this can deter termites and hopefully stop infestation.
4. Cleaning up. Picking up loose timber around your property and removing timber food sources can help with termite attack.
5. Removing moisture. Fixing up excess Moisture in or around your home can help control termites as well. Fixing leaking Air conditioners, pipes, taps and gutters can really help. Termites are attracted to moisture so limiting that will help control them.

Effective & Permanent Solutions

Do-it-yourself solutions don’t always work, especially for large infestations. We can, however, survey your property and provide a pest control solution that we know will work.

Once we’ve eradicated the termites, we’ll provide a long-term plan to ensure there’s no re-occurrence. That will include clearing wood that attracts them from around your property, sealing gaps that allow entry and checking for leaks that create the damp conditions they like. At Dentec, we can, of course, also check regularly for signs of any re-infestation and will treat as necessary.