Termites Your Home Is a Ticking Time Bomb

If you’ve been following our blog you know the importance of inspecting your home regularly for problems. Whether they are structural, electrical, or deal with the plumbing, regularly inspecting your home is key to avoiding costly repairs. While we’ve spent a lot of time discussing how the various systems of your home can fail, we haven’t spoken much about external elements which can have an impact on you and your family. Today we’ll cover one of the biggest issues facing Florida home owners, termites.

If you haven’t performed a self-inspection for termites in a while, you could have a ticking time bomb in your walls. The first step in inspecting your home for termites is to head outside. Begin walking around your property and look for fallen limbs, old wood, or other wood-based debris. Be sure to move all of these at least 15 feet away from your house, as they are notorious for attracting termites.

Next, check your gutters. Be sure that there is no standing water in them and that water is being moved away from your foundation. Moist environments can help create ideal homes for termites. As you make your way around the foundation of your home, be on the lookout for mud tubes. These are exactly what they sound like and lead from the ground up to your home. These house live termites and are a bad sign. Also, inspect any entries into your home, such as the window frames, door casings, and around the walls of your garage.

How you landscape your property also plays a role in termite development. If you have wood mulch up against your home, take a rake and pull it back a bit. You may also want to consider replacing this with rocks, rubber mulch, or pine straw as an alternative. The same goes for your wooden fence. If it is touching your home, it may be a problem. Typically most pre-treated wood used in fencing naturally deters insects, but it is better to be safe than sorry.

If you think you may have a real termite issue, don’t just kill the pests call a home inspector to perform a thorough inspection, so you know everywhere damage occurred.