It’s important that you protect your home from termites. These wood-destroying insects can feed upon the wood that creates the structure of our homes. Those structures protect us from the wind, the rain, and all of the outside issues. Keeping termites and other wood-destroying insects away is a top priority. A good Tulsa exterminator can help you get that done.

So let’s talk a little bit about termites and everything that they are. It’s important, first of all, that you understand that termites in Oklahoma are subterranean termites. We specifically have the eastern subterranean termite. These insects have to stay underground in order to stay in humid air. The air underground is humid because of the water table. If they’re above ground, they will dry out within a matter of minutes and die.

So if they have to come above ground, they’re going to build mud tubes up the side of a structure in order to get where they need to be. The wood that they need is often in trees and other plant-like structures. Termites are tasked with cleaning out all the dead plant material from the woods and everything else.

So in order to do that, they’re going to go up the side of the structure and eat the wood as they go. If you see these mud tubes coming up the side of your foundation, they’re looking to get to the wood. They get up the side of your house to eat that wood.

Often, if they come up a crack or a seam in the foundation, they can consume the paper on the outside of drywall, and they’ll actually create paths in the drywall. If you touch it and feel a soft spot, or you see where they’ve broken through and used mud to patch it, this is a sign you might have termites.

Unfortunately, if you have unseen damage inside and they haven’t broken through, you may not know that they’re there. That’s why it’s important to have an inspection. If you’re having a problem with termites or anything else, contact your Tulsa exterminator right away.

There are two ways that we deal with termites in Oklahoma. We have liquid treatments and we have termite bait station systems.

The liquid treatment is the older of the two systems and has been done for many, many years. This is where you dig a trench around the outside of the building and then pour a liquid termite treatment down into the trench. This liquid treatment will basically create a curtain of pesticide-treated dirt all the way around your house.

If there’s cement that comes up against your house, often we’ll drill holes every foot so that we can put pesticide down there to make sure that there are no gaps in the protection. While this is a very effective way of dealing with termites, it is very labor-intensive and therefore very costly.

The other option is termite bait stations. Scientists have found that termites forage for new food in the top six inches of soil. So termite bait stations are put all the way around your house, one every 20 feet or so.

These stations have bait in them that the termites will gather and then take back to their colony and feed to their young. This takes out the colony at the source. Both of these processes are very effective and can be used in conjunction with each other in order to protect your home from termites.