An In-Depth Breakdown Of Termite Inspection
At this point in time, there is a chance that you have never heard of termite inspection. Termites are small insects that live in colonies and eat the wood around your house. Without professional help, they will continue to grow and could potentially cause major structural damage to your home. This blog post provides an in-depth breakdown of what termite inspections entail and why they are so important for homeowners.
1. What Are Termites?
Termites are small insects that live in colonies. They eat mostly dead plant material, but can also damage structural wood if their populations grow large enough. Unlike ants, they don’t have a central “queen” those other termites gather around to help the colony survive. Instead, each individual termite is capable of reproducing on its own and feeding young series of 1 male and several females called alates. Termites are usually brownish-white or yellowish-white. When they get wings, you’ll see them fly away during the middle of the day; this is because rainforest conditions favor termite survival (heat and high humidity).
2. How Big Are Termites?
Adult dry wood termites are between 1.3 and 8.5 millimeters long, which is pretty small. However, a colony can have as many as 300,000 members. Unlike ants, they don’t all live in one central location; each termite makes its own decisions about what to eat and where to go.
3. How Do I Know If I Have Termites?
If you spot piles of sawdust-like material around your house or actual wood particles that look like shredded wood, there’s a chance that termites may be infesting your home. To confirm this suspicion, it’s important to hire a professional pest control company for an inspection because the only way you could tell for sure whether or not they are there is to have them actually do a thorough inspection of your home. If you find evidence that termites are present, don’t try to deal with it on your own because they can damage structures very quickly, which would be expensive for you to handle.
4. How Important Are Inspections?
Termite inspectors provide homeowners with an invaluable service by inspecting their homes for signs of termite infestation so that they can take preventive measures before there’s any structural damage or risk to the value of their property. It’s far more cost effective to have inspections done than pay thousands upon thousands of dollars in damages after it’s too late and the problem has already become an issue.
5. What Happens During A Typical Inspection?
To begin the termite inspection, the pest control company will do a walk-through of your home to determine where any potential damage could have occurred or been concealed. Then, they’ll take samples from different parts of the structure and send them off for analysis in a lab. This can help you understand how far along exactly the infestation is so that you know what preventative measures are needed to keep it from spreading quickly. A lot of times, inspectors simply use screwdrivers with replaceable tips so that they don’t have to go get new equipment after testing just one spot.
At this stage, it’s also important to note that if signs indicate that there might be termites present on your property but not enough evidence exists yet to tell for sure, you may be offered a free follow-up service within 30 days to make sure no further damage is taking place.
6. What Do The Results Say?
After the inspection is over and all of the samples have been examined in a lab, your inspector will sit down with you and go over his or her findings and recommendations in detail and answer any questions that you might have about what to do next. This process usually takes about 45 minutes to an hour depending on how many questions you ask and how much time it takes for your inspector to explain everything fully so that there’s no confusion later on. Sometimes, inspectors can provide their clients with documentation such as photos or videos taken during the inspection when appropriate so that they don’t have to keep those records on file indefinitely.
In the event that your inspection doesn’t find any signs of termites, there’s a possibility that you could still be at risk for future infestations as well as damage caused by dry wood termites, which is why it might be a good idea to have inspections done periodically, perhaps once every 3-5 years depending on what your pest control company recommends.
7. What Kind Of Equipment Do They Use?
Home inspectors typically use several kinds of tools and equipment during a typical inspection: screwdrivers with replaceable tips for testing small areas instead of having to switch out entire tools, cotton swabs for sampling hidden spots in walls where it wouldn’t be easy to swab with a typical applicator, small dusting brushes to help them get samples from tight areas, templates for shaving small sections of the structure where it might be difficult or impossible to put an entire inspection probe against because there simply isn’t room, and so on.
What makes professional inspections so accurate is not only that they know how to properly use all kinds of specialized equipment but also that they are trained in how to identify signs indicating termite presence before deciding whether or not further testing is necessary. Many pest control companies offer free consultations as well as inspections for your convenience.
