| Not necessarily. I found them living in just about any dark spot. They
| were even in a plastic diskette box (a hundred ants or more with
| eggs).
| I didn't stop them until I found the mother ship in a flower bed out
| front. A splash of chloradane in a bucket of water made them die.

It sounds like you just like to kill things.
I've never seen carpenter ants living anywhere
but in wood. Either way, there's no need to
kill them. They live on dead insects and debris,
doing no harm.