Termite Prevention Tips
By introducing some basic maintenance
precautions around your home and property, you can greatly lower the risk of termites being attracted to or
entering your valuable home. The aim is to discourage termites from foraging on your property by removing or
raising above ground all potential food sources. Termites have incredible senses when it comes to searching
out new food sources and can be attracted to you home from far away. So here are some simple steps you can
take to make your home less of a target!
• Do not store timber, refuse, firewood
or similar materials against or close to your house or building. Remember, Termites love
timber!
• Clean up any piles of branches or
pieces of wood in your backyard.
• Remove all stumps and dead trees.
Stumps and dead trees represent a huge food resource for termites with a large area in direct contact with
the soil and provide ideal sites for feeding and nesting.
• Do not use untreated bark chips in
your garden or garden beds. Wood-chip mulch should be removed or replaced with stones or termite-resistant
mulch.
• Maintain a 75mm high clear area around
the edge of your home to allow visual inspection of possible termite activity up the side of your foundation
concrete slab.
• Rake garden beds away from your home
to expose weep holes and the edge of your concrete slab.
• Replace wooden lawn ornaments with
non-wood items.
• Raise fence posts, deck posts and
stair stringers onto concrete or use an alternative to wood for building.
• Ensure that wooden sheds are raised
above ground.
• Check you don't have a wooden platform
under aluminum or vinyl sheds. Build a platform of metal, concrete or PVC for stacking
firewood.
• Fix any leaking plumbing, wet areas
caused by poor drainage, leaks from the roof or other major areas of dampness as termites thrive where there
is a source of moisture.
• Finally,
regularly inspect the perimeter of your home for signs of termite damage or evidence of access up from the
ground and into you home (look for termite mud leads ).
By keeping the edge of your home free of un-necessary obstructuction, visual
inspection becomes easier as the edge of your home around the foundation slab is the high risk point of entry for
termites into your valuable home.
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