I'm thinking about hiring someone to come out and protect my home from termites. I don't have a clue if I have a problem and I'm not sure how I would know. Do you guys get someone to come out and treat for these destructive pests? And did you know they train dogs to sniff out termites? Interesting.... http://www.hadleypestcontrol.com/html/termite_dogs.html
We had the house treated for them one time. We have railroad tie stairs from the backyard to the garage, and the termites were hollowing out the ties. The drilled 3/4" holes in the concrete and put something down the hole, then filled the holes back up. We haven't had any problems since, and that was probably 10 years ago or more.
We had a large group of swarmers around the side of the garage which I believe had either hijacked their way in with or later settled into some wood chips that the city makes available to its residents as free mulch... We have our house sprayed for bugs quarterly, and I showed the area to our regular bug man... he inspected it closely and looked all around the house and his suggestion was NOT to treat it at this time, but rather just keep a close eye on it. Other than that swarm that day, he couldn't find any evidence of them setting up long-term (he was looking for dirt columns leading to their nests, among other things)... said there wasn't really any reason to spend thousands yet on pre-treatment until we identified if they were really setting up house. I've never seen them since, but I'm keeping my eyes open.
You know, when we tore out the vinyl flooring in our laundry room to replace with tile...we discovered holes that had been drilled into the slab and capped off with red plastic. Never understood what that could have been until now. Did they just drill into your garage floor? Iowa...negative on the firewood but we do have some mulch near the house where we did some landscaping.
Depends on where you live and how old your house is. Down south it's a necessity to have the ground around your house treated. Termites have to have a route or path to the ground. You saturate the ground with deep injection and you're good for a long time. Up here.... termites are really not a problem. In Georgia.... they were everywhere. Thousand to pretreat seems a bit much. Sounds like a rip off.
I've owned 3 houses, and found termites in the first two. Treatment is expensive, around $1,500 for the initial dose, if I remember correctly.
Yes, they just drilled along the outside edges. For ours, they used mortar to fill the holes, since there is nothing covering them. I'm not sure on the cost, I was like 11 when all this happened lol.
