July 4 – Termites may be small, but they can cause enormous damage to a home over a long period of time.
Tyler Nipper, general manager of Cherokee Pest Control, said the insects found in Oklahoma are subterranean termites. Nipper said any cellulose-based material, except treated wood, can be eaten by termites, including paper, cardboard and dead trees. Termites are not often transferred from one location to another because they are usually everywhere in the ground.
“You can go out there, take a shovel and scrape the grass off the ground, take a piece of wood — a pine plank or a piece of split firewood — and put it down there on that bare spot of ground. Within a week, there could be termites in there, or it could be a year or two,” Nipper said.
Nipper said people call every year about winged termites while working in flower beds, but the insects are usually flying ants. Nipper said winged termites are generally found during swarming season, from about March to May in Oklahoma.
“Once you have an active infestation of termites in your home, or in a stump in the woods, or wherever, in the springtime — if the conditions are right — we have what we call a swarm of termites,” Nipper said. “They look like black ants, and they have wings. They fly out of the wall, an outlet in the drywall, a baseboard. You come home from work and your entire entryway to your house is covered in these things. A lot of them will be dead and their wings will fall off.”
Termites do not cause damage in a short period of time. Steps can be taken to prevent destruction even before a house is built.
Before a concrete slab is poured, Nipper said, a pretreatment can be done to prevent termite problems for two decades. Nipper said a termite company can spray liquid termite control into the soil fill beneath the slab. The barrier created by the termite control generally lasts 20 years.
Nipper recommends an annual or biennial maintenance spray in crawl spaces or the base of the ground around the outside of the home. The spray can help kill seasonal insects, spiders, ants and crickets.
“From a financial perspective, that’s really the only reasonable thing you can do to prevent a termite problem from occurring, and it’s certainly not a guarantee to prevent it,” Nipper said. “There are a lot of other small factors that go into it.”
Nipper said termite control should be done under the house down to the ground in a crawl space, and for a concrete slab, drilling should be done with chemicals pumped through the holes. Brick homes should have holes every two bricks, while a rock veneer home should be drilled every 18 inches. A trench is then dug through the house down to the foundation, and the hole is filled with chemicals. Nipper said the chemicals will seep into the ground near the foundation. The soil is then put back in the trench and sprayed.
You can take preventative measures such as not stacking hardwood or firewood against a house and by placing cedar and/or cypress mulch in flower beds.
“Termites don’t like cedar and cypress,” Nipper said. “They’ll eat it, but they don’t like it.”
Because termites thrive in moist conditions, Nipper said, people should be aware of moisture near the home, as standing water or drainage can dilute the spray. Nipper recommends extending downspouts so moisture isn’t so close to the building. Any type of wood debris or moisture under a home in a crawl space can create an ideal condition for termites.
