A termite infestation often goes unnoticed until they cause serious damage to your home. It helps to know the common indicators of a termite invasion in your home to take the necessary steps to reduce the pest population and prevent further damage.
If you have noticed piles of soil-like material in your home, hollow tubes against your foundation, cracked plaster on your walls, or swarms of flying termites, you likely have a termite infestation in your home. The next step is to call the San Diego pest control experts at Green Flash Pest Control to determine the infestation level and the best termite removal treatment. Don't ignore signs of termite activity in your San Diego home; call for help as soon as you think there may be a problem.
Can I Treat My House For Termites Myself?
The first question homeowners ask themselves when they confirm a termite infestation in their home is whether they can do effective termite control on their own.
Getting rid of termites on your own is rarely effective and has several drawbacks. While most people use cold treatments, baiting, traps, orange oil, and boric acid, the treatments aren't nearly effective enough to address an infestation.
Termites are hard to get rid of because they are tough to spot and stay in hidden areas in your home that are not easily accessible. Their colonies are also huge, and a nest can have hundreds of thousands, even millions, of termites, which are easy to miss during treatment. Their colonies can also rebuild themselves even in the queen's absence, and only professionals know how to tackle that.
While treating your San Diego home for termites yourself may be difficult, you can help to prevent an infestation. Ensure wood around your home has treatment to keep away termites. Fix leaking pipes and gutters as standing water attracts termites, and regularly inspect your home for termites to take proactive measures to stop an invasion.
Is It Possible To Fully Get Rid Of Termites?
While you cannot eliminate termites in San Diego from the environment, a trained professional can eliminate a termite problem in your home for good.
Termite removal is a complex process involving multiple treatments before professionals completely rid your home of pests. Depending on the severity of the infestation, a trained termite specialist near you may have to use multiple techniques for extermination. For instance, we can use soil treatments that involve the injection of liquid treatments into the soil and using other specialized equipment.
What Kind Of Damage Can Termites Cause?
A termite infestation can cause damage to your San Diego home, with the severity of the damage depending on the extent of the infestation. If left unmanaged, a termite infestation can cause the following types of damage in your home:
- Weakening the foundation and beams: Termites eat up wood in your home's foundation, and support beams weaken the structure. When the beams collapse, they are hazardous to your home's occupants. With time, they weaken your home's foundation and structural integrity, creating a security threat.
- Damage to pipes: Plastic pipes in your home get damaged by the formic acid produced by termites, exposing wiring. Their activity can also damage wiring, resulting in power outages and the threat of electric fires.
- Defective doors and windows: Termites chew into the timber within your doors, causing them to malfunction. As they defecate within the doors, there is a buildup of a layer of waste which interferes with the ventilation by trapping moisture and heat internally.
- Asthma attacks: While termites don't transfer diseases to humans, their activities in a home can cause allergic reactions and asthma attacks.
You should treat a termite infestation with urgency, as they cause more damage to your home than any other pest. Failure to exterminate these pests will result in expensive home repairs in the future.
The Trick To Permanently Getting Rid Of Termites In San Diego
Getting rid of termites permanently using DIY treatments is not effective or sustainable. They require complex treatment techniques only professionals can handle.
Call a termite exterminator in San Diego instead of trying to eliminate an infestation yourself, and you will save time and money. Green Flash Pest Control professionals thoroughly inspect your home to identify an infestation and the severity of termite activity.
Depending on our findings, we'll recommend a tailor-made treatment for your home to permanently eliminate the termites. Common treatment plans involve direct wood treatment, liquid treatment, and bait stations. We'll also recommend prevention strategies to prevent re-infestation. Contact us to get started and to learn more about our residential and commercial pest control services in San Diego.