Termites found during a renovation

Stripping out an old floor or ceiling is how a lot of termite activity comes to light, and it always arrives at an awkward point in the programme. The builder wants to keep going, and everything that gets closed up now is closed up over whatever is living in it.

The first thing we do is establish how far the activity actually extends, which is rarely the area that was opened up. Termites travel through the structure and through the soil beneath it, so the piece of timber that looks worst is not necessarily where the colony is working from. That assessment decides the treatment, not the damage that happened to be visible.

From there the work is usually a soil barrier around and beneath the structure, direct treatment of affected timber, or baiting where the layout makes a barrier impractical. Sequencing matters as much as method: the treatment has to go in before the areas it protects are closed up, so we work to the builder programme rather than beside it.

Where a property is being renovated anyway, this is the cheapest moment in its life to deal with termites properly, because the structure is already open.