On 12/16/2015 11:12 PM, Micky wrote:
On Wed, 16 Dec 2015 19:43:30 -0500, Frank "frank wrote:
On 12/16/2015 6:47 PM, wrote:
Branching off from the "Log Cabin" thread in which termites were
mentioned.
Where I live, termites do not exist (thankfully).
I have always wondered if Termites eat TREATED wood, or do they avoid
it?
If they do avoid it, it would make sense to build everything using
treated wood in places where there are termites.
I'll assume they do not for today's treatments that are usually copper
salt based versus the old treatments that used arsenic. The newer
treatments are advised for above ground.
I know for a fact that they do not eat the old stuff.
My neighborhood is teaming with subterranean termites that had attacked
Is this a legal partnership or just an informal one?
neighbors on both sides. I had been doing DIY treatments until they
invaded stumps close to the house so I had Terminex install barrier
treatment to ease my mind.
I have two flights of steps going down into my back yard made of treated
lumber and termites left them alone. They and a post for a basketball
hoop have remained intact for 30+ years. Couple of rail fence posts
which I believe have newer treatment also remain intact after 10 years.
About 20 or 25 years ago I found termite tunnels in the pickets of my
picket fence, and maybe a rail or two. I went to a poison store but
couldn't find something that appealed to me. Someone there told me
about another store at a specific location 3 miles away, so I went
there, but couldn't find it. While asking for it, a guy told me he
knew where it was, and we drove about 3 blocks to private home. He
walked back to his job while I knocked on the door.
A woman with an infant in her arms answered the door. She tod me she
was the wife of a well known exterminator in the area. She told me
I didn't want to use poison just for a fence. If it were the house
(or something attached to it) it woudl be different, but termite
poison was too poisonous just for a fence. It was pretty clear she
got this from her husband and he wouldnt' have done it either, even if
I paid him. She spent 10 or 15 minutes with me and her infant and
her 4-year old. She told me to make sure the grass didn't reach the
pickets, to take a saw and cut an inch or two off the bottom of every
picket if necessary. I did that to about 30 of them.
Very few of my rails have had termites, even though I don't think they
were treated. None of my posts have had termites. Some are water
damaged at the top but other than that all 35 are good, except for
one, that rotted and broke off at ground level when I pushed on it.
Plenty of poisons will work but the EPA has taken the best from us.
Treatment used to be to surround the house with chlordane and it would
last forever. That's why EPA banned it since it lasted forever.
Terminex used Termidor around my house and says it might last 20 years
which is longer than I will probably last.
There were other short term treatments, I believe Bayer, that sprayed
around would last a year or trenched, 3 years.
There were spots that I could not reach, like under concrete and
Terminex drilled through front porch and patio and injected Termidor.
So, I could have kept working on it myself but still be subject to
potential attack from areas hard to treat.
I also used to spray diazinon around the house every year but that got
banned and then I had an ant problem. The Termidor treatment stopped
them too.
There is also a commercially available only juvenile hormone treatment
that kills the nest. When one neighbor was invaded causing swarming in
the house and damage to house the exterminator used the hormone and they
disappeared to show up maybe 10 years later. Termites can travel
several hundred feet from nest or establish new nests in a swarm.
I actually got them in wet wood, at the top of my wood pile on the
concrete patio.