New house, one year old, wife very upset, found mud towers in tiled bathroom wall: termites she says.

we have metal structured roof and aluminium frame windows. So I thouight we wouild be safe, but I am told these termites attack concrete and electrical wires also .

Wife told me I did not listen to her before we started building the house, saying we should have mixed chemicals around the foundations, I probably did not understand what she was talking about

Any way, anyone with experience how to handle this?
Methods, costs, company? We live 40kms outside Udon.

I found this Faroh East on Udon map, might contact them today.

Any advice welcome

never heard of termites eating anything other than wood or byproducts of. concrete and electic wires? hard wood/teak and such keep them at bay. there's got to be some wood in there some where, any dry wall, gypsom board? yes, they will eat the paper from that, so if used, need to spray/saturate as much as possible and that keeps them away.

any wood anywhere, they will find and munch on, use none or very little, and only cosmetic, nothing structural when building. they got some things of mine, replaced with metal, other things they didn't touch, whether before or after spraying.

good luck.

Stop in at Homemart on Ring Road and ask for Mr King next time you're in town. He speaks English like an Aussie, maybe because he lived there for a long time. He will fix you up with a chemical called Chaindrite Stedfast 4 SC and a sprayer for it. Directions on chemical bottle are in Thai but does say (in English) that it "kills termites, beetles, ants and other pests". Pictures of a lot of bugs including termites, cockroaches, fleas, ticks, flies, mosquitoes, etc. We've used it around foundations of some houses we've rented to keep out roaches and centipedes. Very easy to use and works great. The chemical is also available at Tool Pro, I've noticed.

Don't know anyone who has used the exterminator company but maybe someone will chime in.

Had builder people pop in this afternoon, Safe-T-cut was flipping every 10 minutes, had a loose wire in a plug box, he checked the termite problem in the bathroom and said it were small ants under a tile. wife napped with poison, should do the job, so NO termites arounds, ouf....

So termites eating through cement/concrete is urban legend? Not so sure...

Polehawk, thanks for the tip, just was in homemart yesterday to pick-up paint...was helped by a good English speaking girl sitting at a separate desk at the far side of the entry. Might consider spraying around the house.

If there is any doubt about it, I would strongly recommend going to a proper professional Pest Control company, and quickly.

I've had a problem with termites before in a house in Phuket and they get all over the place before you know you've got them. They come from nests or mounds in the ground usually under your house, but travel up through cracks in the concrete, electrical conduits, wooden frames etc and will eat anything wood, usually wooden door and window frames, or the paper lining on plaster board ceilings (gypsum), or wooden furniture.

A professional company will saturate spray under the house if they can get at it. If not they will drill through the floors and inject/spray. They will also spray around the house and the base of external walls, and puff a special insecticide powder into affected woodwork, cracks in wood, skirting boards and the like. They will return usually at monthly intervals and if necessary repeat the spraying process.

What is important is to get to the source/nest of the termites which is usually under your house. I initially didn't appreciate this and bought a locally available can of spray and sprayed the affected areas around the door frame, but that just drives them elsewhere. And I hadn't realised that they had already gone up inside the plastic electric conduits, had then spread out and were munching through the ceiling board in several different places.

You can often spot their narrow soil coloured trails around and under the house or up the outside and into cracks, -like dried soil about 2 or 3cms wide.

I strongly recommend you get in a professional company. It costs about 6k baht, depending on size of your house, and provides repeat visits and cover for a full year. I think this is a situation where a stitch in time really does save nine!!

For reference, recently quoted 21.000 Baht (US$675) to treat a house with a slab floor in Arizona, U.S.A. If you can get your house treated for a few thousand Bath, that's a bargain. Of course, if you don't have any wood or wood products in your house, then don't bother

Just had a read up on these , and it's possible for them to chew through some plastics and even Lead, no mention of concrete though.

The University of Florida has a good write-up about termites, what they eat, how to see if you've got them, etc. http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/MG064 They say they can't eat concrete but are very good at finding small cracks to get inside so it looks like they can eat through it.

Photo of Mr king doing some deliveries

Termites will chew concrete and break away the edges to make a wider path, they only need a small crack to start with

ok, and you got them baking pans upside down as a defense. bless you, hope they work. but from my termite devil's advocate mind, you got one hell of a buffet sitting there.

good luck, sure / hope you know your ****.

First defence are the hole sinks around the yard filled with saw dust cardboard soft timber, check regularity, if find termites posion with Arsenic powder, then they take it back to the nest and the worker termites get licked clean by ther fellow mates and it should kill off the nest,

Second defence is the steel columns, nicely painted white for visual inspection of the mud mounds

Then to slow them up theres the capping baking dish

and final is the lower timber has been treated with chemical.that should keep them away and make the neighbours home a better buffet

Above practice if inspected weekly when out and about the yard
will give you a good protection from the little mites.

That said, it is a lot better protection than any slab on ground home I have seen here. no protection other than maybe just posion the ground, which will disperse with time and ground water

Termites no different than in OZ, above practice will give you good protection if you care to do some visual work, the faliures in home from attack is generally the owner not doing regular inspections.

you can build in any material you like with the right method and approach

if you want no termite problem build in concrete, and treat all timbers with posions

from the Termite buffet Soi 7 Ban Nong toom

[quote="thalenoi"]Had builder people pop in this afternoon, Safe-T-cut was flipping every 10 minutes, had a loose wire in a plug box, he checked the termite problem in the bathroom and said it were small ants under a tile. wife napped with poison, should do the job, so NO termites arounds, ouf....

So termites eating through cement/concrete is urban legend? Not so sure...

Polehawk, thanks for the tip, just was in homemart yesterday to pick-up paint...was helped by a good English speaking girl sitting at a separate desk at the far side of the entry. Might consider spraying around the house.[/quote
they get in through cracks in the concrete they do not eat concrete It when it settles some times it hairline crack that how they enter