Something does not look right and you are trying to figure out if it is actually a termite problem or just an old house doing old house things. Here is what you are actually looking for.
Mud Tubes Are the One Sign You Cannot Ignore
Subterranean termites live in the soil and build mud tubes to travel between the ground and the wood in your home. They look like thin brown tunnels about the width of a pencil running along your foundation, up exterior walls, along baseboards or anywhere that connects soil to wood. If you find one anywhere on your home you have confirmed termite activity. That is not a maybe. Check the exterior foundation all the way around the house, the interior where walls meet the floor and inside closets and utility rooms along the baseboards.
Wood That Feels Wrong When You Press On It
Healthy wood is solid and firm. When you press on a baseboard, door frame or window sill and it gives in a way that does not feel right something has compromised it from the inside. Soft crumbling baseboards are one of the most common ways Wesley Chapel homeowners first realize something is going on. Termites eat from the inside out and leave a thin surface shell that looks completely normal until the damage gets bad enough that the shell starts to fail. Hollow sounding wood when you tap on it is the same problem. If you are pressing on wood anywhere in your home and it does not feel the way it should that is a reason to call.
Wings Near Windows and Doors
Termite colonies send out swarmers every year, winged reproductives that fly out to start new colonies. Termite swarms in Wesley Chapel happen after warm rains and the swarmers shed their wings when they land. Small piles of tiny wings near windows, doors and light fixtures inside your home means termites swarmed inside or right outside. If they swarmed inside there is already an established colony in the structure. Do not sit on this one.
Paint That Bubbles Without an Obvious Reason
Termite activity inside walls creates moisture as the colony works through the wood. That moisture causes paint to bubble or look uneven without any obvious water source nearby. If you have a spot of bubbled paint on an interior wall that is not near a bathroom, a leaking window or any known moisture issue it is worth finding out what is behind it. Most people paint over it and find it comes back in the same spot a few months later.
The Problem With Waiting
The wood in your home does not know you are waiting to see if things get worse. A termite colony that has established itself inside your walls is working through it every single day. The difference between finding a problem at six months and finding it at eighteen months is significant in terms of how much damage has accumulated and how much of it is now structural.
Wesley Chapel has some of the highest termite pressure in Florida because of the sandy soil, the year round warmth and the humidity throughout Pasco County. There is no real winter here to slow colonies down. They work through wood twelve months a year and a colony can do a lot of damage in the time most homeowners spend deciding whether what they are seeing is worth a call.
If you pressed on a baseboard last month and it felt soft and you are still thinking about it that feeling was telling you something. Call us and find out what it was. Our termite treatment starts with knowing exactly what you are dealing with before anything else happens.