hevs

Well being as Me, Badge and dotty hi jacked yafams lovely post (quite innocently i hasten to add) with the talk of termites, i've decided to give them a thread of their own.

Dotty gave an informative web site with piccies on, click here

http://www.pink.com.au/termites.htm

Does anyone have any real horror stories, or hints and tips re these pesky creatures??? If so, share!!

hevs

PS
Just read that back and i havn't lost the plot, really!!

They are a real problem overhere, our house has had 2 attacks, luckily fixable, but apparently some people arn't so lucky!! :lecture:

Megalania

Remnants of LitchField - 10 pubs, 20,000 residents - Gone, all gone:

hevs

SEE!!! told 'ya

Ceri

termites - about one in three people in Queensland will get them (or one in four - figures change from different sources).

We had termites about 5 years ago in house we were renting , and were about to move out . Holes started to appear in the wooden window frames - I immediately got in touch with the estate agents (they didn't want to know as the house had just been sold)... anyway about two days later you could see the termites (the worker ones) in the holes , munching away - I kept spraying them.. we then had a termite inspector out who said the termites had moved on - so nothing was done.. a couple of days later termites came flying out of the window frame - millions and millions of them (it was like something out of a horror movie) .. horrible things.

Anyway, we moved out the next day and the new owners had bought a dud - don't know if they sued, as they did have an inspection before they bought the house.

How to prevent termites - even with all the termite barriers you can still get termites (they are not 100% foolproof) - the only way to stop them is regularly check around the perimeter of your home for mud tunnels etc, and have a licensed termite inspector out every year to check the home for termites for you. Or build your house with a steel frame.

Cheers

Florida_03

I had a house in SE QLD built from Hebel block (Aerated concrete). Outer walls 8" solid, lined in Gyprock bonded directly to the blocks. Dividing walls 4" solid Hebel lined both sides with Gyprock. Only wood was pine architraves, window sills and skirting boards. All on a concrete slab.

Guess what they ate? Through 3 bedrooms, and hall, the skirting boards, window sill of one window, the architraves around 2 windows, and the BIW's. Got the arsenic man in, dusted the bastards and the nest. My youngest used to tell me about monsters at night. It was the bastards chewing the skirting boards in her room.

Ceri

horrible aren't they? when holes started appearing in the window frame - I used to knock the window frames - and you could hear them munching away ( another tip - bang your walls/window frames and put you ear to the wall and listen.. another way to find out of you have termites) .

When ours came bursting out - there were millions and millions - I had to stand with a vacuume cleaner sucking them out of the air, it was that bad.

Our termites got in by going up through a pergola , which was joined to the outside of the house - they chewed up through the "legs" of the pergola outside and into the window frame .

They are quite a prob here in parts of Brisbane - millions and millions of damage are caused every year by them.

I've actually heard of one case where someone had an old fibreglass boat, which was parked up for years -he moved the boat to get stuck into his "project" and found out termites actually had chewed through the boat's hull - fibreglass!

cheers

Carol in Oz

Had them at my place too. Pest controller said the worst thing we could have done was to disrupt them before treating the prob because the arsenic has to get back to the nest. Ours had got into the garage only which was lucky and the nest was in a tree at the back of the yard. We had to toss out anything lying around that was timber under and around the house. Drill holes around the garage floor and pump the chemicals into them and also under the house. Also if youve got the garden mulched up to the house and it happens to be bark or the like, give it a dig up now and then to check. Better still to avoid bark as a mulch altogether.
Carol

hevs

i've been checking all the floor boards like some kind of loony today, and i've found some soft spongy boards which look as though they have been "visited" But there are no signs of any living things
do they just move out when they've had their fill or something
Obviously i need to replace the wood, but shoul i be doing anything else?

Megalania

Termite Damage