You’ve likely heard horror stories of termites stealthily chewing through wood. They don’t stop there. But cause major structural damage before homeowners even notice them. House wood termites are silent destroyers that can secretly munch their way through your most valuable asset – your home.
These sneaky little bugs and termites don’t need big entry points. Even the width of your credit card is enough for them to get into any wooden structure. For instance, siding, framing, or flooring. They travel underground through mud tubes they construct, leading right away to your house foundation. These tubes protect them from light and air. And give them 24/7 access to invade your home.
Once inside, termites waste no time to feed on your place. They chew through wood cells slowly over time. Leaving the insides hollow while the outside shell is intact. That’s where homeowners get confused and fail to detect any termite wood damage. The other home structures like exterior walls, support beams, or floor joists – may appear fine outside but are damaged inside.
This blog by TexInspec covers everything you need to know about house wood termites. We’ll discuss how termite wood damage happens. And what are possible signs that alarm for termite damage? So read till the end to know the ins and outs of termite damages at your place.
How Termites Damage Your Home?
Termites can wreak havoc on your home in many ways. It not only ruins your home’s structure and aesthetic appeal. But it also impacts your home’s insulation and foundation. Even your family’s health can be compromised by these little intruders. You wouldn’t definitely want that!
Let’s discuss termite wood damage in detail.
Structural Damage
Termites feast on cellulose, which is naturally found in wood. These tiny living beings are responsible for devouring your home’s wooden structures, like wood frames of the walls, floors, doors, support beams, and roof rafters.
This may put you in a dicey situation, compromising your home’s structural integrity. It results in sagging or weak spots on floors or walls. This also leads to detachment of elements like moldings or sidings and even outright collapse. And when you have to go to fix the damage, you will have to replace the damaged framing. We also need wall or floor coverings to be removed first.
Aesthetic Damage
Termites don’t stop munching on your home’s structures only. They would literally ruin your home’s exterior curb appeal and aesthetics. As they eat through walls and wood trim, they cause exterior damage. This damage can be in the form of peeled paint, cracked drywall, bulging sections, and crumbling areas on fascia boards or soffits.
Coming inside, you may see bubbling flooring, stalactite-shaped mud protrusions, and crumbling sheetrock or baseboards. If you think that your underlying structures are intact, you’ll still need to spend hefty prices over repairs to return your home’s aesthetic appeal – breaking the bank.
Insulation Damage
Cellulose insulation within walls is a tasty feast for termites. As they eat through it, the insulation value is reduced. Which means more money to burn over energy expenses every month. And if you go for replacing the insulation, the project can go as long as tearing the walls – an expensive and messy job.
Foundation Damage
Termites cause unseen damage by creating detailed tunnel networks underground, next to your home’s foundations. This damage may include voids, cracks, and shifts in foundation walls or slabs. When fixing the damage, you’ll have to spend a fortune on extensive foundation repairs. It may include piers, brackets, and even slab jacking to stabilize your foundation again.
Health Damage
One can barely bear damage to home structures but imagine extending these damages to your home’s safety or family’s health. That’s where no one can compromise. Termite droppings stir up allergens and particulate matter, leading to air quality issues within a home.
Their presence also means excess moisture, which can lead to toxic mold growth in walls or crawl spaces. And can damage your respiratory health. That’s why identifying termites through proper termite inspections and addressing these issues is important to protect your family’s health.
Signs That Your Home Is Under Termites Wood Damage
Although termites are silent, pesky intruders, you can still infer their presence by their telltale signs. You can find imprints of house wood termites feasting on your place. When you are aware of these warning signs, you can catch their whole colonies and tracks to stop further termite wood damage.
So here are the warning signs to look out for:
Discarded Wings
In the spring swarming season, look for piles of discarded termite wings. They can be found around doors, windows, along baseboards, or in spider webs. This shows reproductive termites have taken flight from within your home.
Hollow-Sounding Wood
Tap along moldings, frames, support posts, and flooring with the handle of a screwdriver. If you find hollow or soft spots, understand that they indicate termites are eating the wood interior.
Walls With Mud Tubes
You must look for narrow mud-encrusted tubes running up foundation walls or across joists in crawl spaces or basements. This is a visible termite highway directly into your wood framing.
Structural Collapse
If you find sagging floors, detached moldings, cracked drywall seams, or bulging wall sections – you must know what it shows. Obviously, it’s nothing but heavy termite damage. This shows how termites have substantially damaged supports behind the scenes, causing imminent collapse.
Droppings of Particles
You may see granular debris that looks like sawdust or the appearance of termite fecal pellets near wood. It is an obvious clue of their presence.
Wall Damage
Peeling paint or wallpaper, protruding stalactites of mud, or bubbling sheetrock also mean termites are active within your home’s walls.
Shelving On a Wooden Surface
If items resting directly on wood shelving leave imprints or sink into softened wood, termites are likely to infest below.
Live Termite Found
Catching these insects crawling on framing, inside holes in wood, or swarming is definite proof of an active infestation.
The Bottom Line
As we’ve explored, termites are silent stalkers that can secretly bring down your entire home from the inside out if you leave them unchecked. They can compromise your home’s structures, aesthetic appeal, and marketability. It can also impact your family’s health. We suggest you seek a proper termite inspection to identify the existence of house wood termites. So you don’t become the next victim of these pesky intruders. Scroll through our blog sections to read more on termites.