Keep Termites Out Of Your Charlotte, NC Home

All termites are not the same. In the United States, we have drywood, damp wood, and subterranean termites. Each of these termite species will attack a home in a slightly different way. They also have different food preferences - and by food, we mean what kind of wood they'll eat. In our Charlotte service area, we deal with subterranean termites. They are the most destructive of all termites.

One reason for this is that subterranean termites are difficult to detect. If you want to keep termites out of your Charlotte home, detection and prevention go hand-in-hand. Let's take a look at how you can protect your property and how Go-Forth Home Services can give you added protection to make sure your home never becomes a meal for termites.

Don't Feed The Termites

There are several ways you can provide food sources for termites. Some of them might actually surprise you. When you actively remove food sources, you also remove one way you might detect termites on your property, but believe us when we tell you that there are better ways to detect termites than to give them food to eat.

• Do you have a stump, log, or dying tree in your yard? If you cut into wood that is decaying, you can uncover termite activity. Unfortunately, wood sources like these are ideal for termites, and workers will let the queen know that there is plenty of food if she wants to make more babies.
• Do you keep a brush pile in your yard? Dead branches will attract termites into your yard and help colonies grow quickly. When you pick a branch up, you may see termites on the branch. This is one way to detect them. Burn those branches or put them on an elevated platform to get them off the ground. Make the subterranean termite workers work hard to get to this food source. When they create shelter tubes up the side of a metal or stone structure that has branches stacked on it, you'll detect their activity.
• Do you have any wood buried in your yard? This is just all-around bad. You should never bury scrap wood, cardboard, leaves, sticks, or any other material that termites eat. You can, however, dig up buried wood and find out if there are any termites feeding on it.
• Do you have any structures on your property that have wood-to-soil contact? When building a deck in Charlotte, it is wise to put concrete piers in the ground and have wood supports rest on top of the concrete. This is so that you can see shelter tubes when termites come to feed on your wood. It also reduces the potential food of wood rot, which is a conducive condition for termite activity. If you currently have wood-to-soil contact, you can dig away at the soil and look to see if there is any termite damage.
• Do you have a woodpile? We have some residents that use a wood stove during the winter to take the chill off. If you're one of them, you should make sure to keep your cords of wood on top of metal, stone, or some other material that will shield them from direct access to termites. If your wood currently sits on the ground, you might be able to tell that you have termites by picking a piece of wood up and checking the bottom where it rested on the soil. There could be damage or termite workers present.

Other Warning Signs To Look For

It is difficult to detect worker termites, and the ways to check for worker termites are going to make your property vulnerable. It is best to remove wood sources and wood-to-soil contact and use other methods for detecting termites. We mentioned one already. That's a good place to start.

• Watch for shelter tubes. Subterranean termites create these structures to go from the soil to the wood of your home. You can find them in many places, but they're most likely to be in dark, humid spots.
• Look for mud patches. Termite workers use soil and saliva to create mud for patching tunnel wall breaches. You might see mud on wood that is being eaten on the inside by termites.
• Keep an eye out for swarmer termites. These are black insects with white wings. A swarmer is only ⅜ of an inch long. If you see one by itself, you may just shoo it away and think nothing of it. We hope you don't.
• Subterranean termites rarely cause damage that you can easily see. But you may be able to see this damage if you're willing to get dirty and crawl underneath exterior structures or go into a crawl space under your home. In a dark, humid space or where wood is touching damp soil, you might see damage above the ground.

Charlotte Property Owners Turn To Go-Forth Home Services

If you want the best protection against termite damage, you need a proactive termite control solution. The experts here at Go-Forth Home Services trust the award-winning Sentricon® System with Always Active™ to protect homes in Charlotte. We'd love to tell you about it. 

Reach out to us today to learn more.