Do It Yourself Termite Control Tips

Maintaining a healthy landscape around your home helps to act as an early warning against pests, you can see hornets nest in a tree and remove them without harming your home. Removing healthy or dead trees on your property can also help with termite control. If you heat your home with fire wood make sure to clean out your storage areas for wood (commonly outside of the home next to the outside wall and near a door) these are veritable neon signs for termites, they will attract them right to your home, and since the surfaces adjacent to the home are normally unseen due to the piles of firewood, they can creep into your home without noticing. You should treat parts of your home and foundation that are next to such storage areas with sprays or dusts between the firewood storage bins and the wall. Keeping your property clean and clutter free helps reduce the number of safe havens for pests. There are a few ways to detect a termite presence in or around your home. Look for ‘mud tubes’ on your foundation, termites do not like sunlight and will avoid venturing outside, so they will create tunnels leading into your home over your foundation. These are little towers that go up along your foundation that the termites use to get from the wood in your house and the ground. Inspect any wood on the exterior of your home, look for deterioration and any changes. Piles of sawdust are also a sign of termites in your home. The biggest and most important threats are termite swarms. These are winged termites that come from a different colony, perhaps many miles away looking to establish another colony. Inspect areas around your home and foundation, keep water and gutters that leave moisture around your home, termites prefer moist soil, as opposed to dry soil. Moisture can be a major problem for homes in any case so you should direct water from your home anyway. Also remove old tree stumps and wasted lumber from your property; tree stumps leave dry and dead root systems that are giant buffets for termites. Termites are easy to deal with on your own, it is partly time consuming due to the labor and nature of the creatures involved, but saving hundreds on pest control will be great in the long run and utilizing some methods will protect your home for nearly ten years!