Ask Jon Eakes

Last Updated: Thursday, November 30th, 2000, Created: Thursday, November 30th, 2000

Termites

Although no where near as prevalent in cold Canada as in the balmy southern US, termite tunnels do exist in Canadian houses. They tend to be regionally confined and exterminators in your area can tell you if they are a potential problem. In Toronto it is most interesting that the slow annual spread of termites from the docks up through the neighborhood called ?The Beaches? can be traced back to a shipment of crates from England during the second world war.

It is easy to tell termites from ants. Ants have an hourglass like figure joined in the centre by a very thin stem. Termites have a rather straight oblong body of equal thickness and are about half an inch long. They only have wings when they swarm (fly to a new home all together) in the spring. For homeowners and contractors alike, the interesting part of their life style is that they shun daylight and fresh air. Also, they must return to the soil regularly to survive. That means that they need pathways in and out of their food source, your wooden house.

That means that either they need to be able to bore directly from the ground into the wood, or they need a protected pathway. If you permit no wooden part of the house to touch the soil and no pile of fire wood to touch the siding, they can?t get through that way, although they could crawl up through the hollow cores of concrete blocks, or even up a concrete foundation crack. When they can?t get direct access to the wood, they build earthen tunnels that protect them from light and the drying effect of air. If you have taken care to provide no hidden pathways, then the tunnels become the visible sign of their presence. If you do find the tunnels, keep them broken and the ants will dry up and die.

In the southern US where it is taken for granted that the soil around your house is loaded with termites, the building codes require that there be a visible break between the soil and the rest of the house. Basement insulation is not allowed up the outside of the house continuously from the footings up as we do commonly here. Interior basement insulation must leave a two inch gap before the sill plate, to be able to spot the tunnels. So in Canada, if you have termites, and you apply standard construction practices for termite control, you guarantee yourself a condensation problem and a cold floor. One innovative solution is to install a cap flashing right into the wet concrete of a slab-on-grade or a poured foundation that will receive below grade foam insulation panels. More panels are installed right on top of the flashing, but the lip of the flashing will force any termites into building their tunnels over the flashing, exposing them to detection.

There has been some work on a neighbourhood approach to total eradication of termites, but although very promising, it has not been supported by municipalities, leaving a growing problem for individual homeowners.

An interesting note about pressure treated wood and termites. The chemicals in the wood do not kill the termites, it is too diluted for that. Rather it makes the wood non-nutritive, so they simply taste it and go elsewhere.

**Originally published as an article by Jon Eakes in Home Builder Magazine, the magazine of the Canadian Home Builder's Association.

Keywords: Environmental, Insects, Preserved Wood, Pressure Treated, Termites

Print Send To A Friend

Article 653

Privacy | Ruby on Rails Development by Isnor Creative