Termites

Is it urgent?

Usually not. Termites do real damage, but they do it over months and years, not days, so there's time to get a proper look and make a good decision. If you just bought the house, it often makes sense to wait until you've settled in, unless there's an active problem.

How was my house protected when it was built?

New houses around here should be treated for termites during construction, usually one of three ways. The most common is a soil treatment: the dirt under the slab and around the foundation gets treated before it's covered up. Depending on the product, that typically lasts somewhere around five to ten years. Some builders put in bait stations instead. These work great, but require ongoing maintenance. The least common, but our favorite, is treating the wooden framing itself while the walls are still open.

If you have the builder's paperwork, it tells us which method was used and roughly how long it should last. A soil treatment also gets broken when someone digs next to the foundation for a new water line, a sewer line, or landscaping.

What do you recommend?

For many older home in Chattanooga, termite bait stations end up being the best choice. Not only do they work well, but the long-term costs are usually favorable compared to repeated soil treatments. The stations go in the soil around the house, and foraging termites find them before they make their way into the structure. The bait kills off the colony before any potential damage can occur. They protect the structure, not the whole yard, and that's fine. Termites are useful out in the yard; we just don't want them in the house.

What's the catch?

Bait stations only work if they get serviced. If someone installs them and walks away for a few years, nothing is protected. Servicing the stations is covered by monthly fees.

One more thing worth knowing: if your crawl space has been spray foamed, termites can tunnel through the foam where nobody can see them. That makes ongoing protection even more important.

What's included, and what does it cost?

We start by diagramming the house: crawl space, slab, basement, and where every station sits, so nothing gets lost under a new flower bed. Then we service the stations regularly and reinspect the structure every year, checking it against that diagram. We reinspect every year to make sure that if something does go wrong, we catch it, so that our warranty is a retreatment instead of carpentry.

As an add-on to Regular Service, termite protection typically runs $25 to $35 a month, after a one-time setup of $500 to $1,000, depending mostly on how many stations the house needs. It's billed by monthly autopay.

Termite protection has a one-year commitment; after that, it's month to month. If you sell the house, the coverage can transfer to the new owner.

Can you take over my current warranty?

We don't take over another company's warranty, because we don't know exactly what they did. If you already have a decent warranty with someone who shows up and services it, keeping it might be a smart move. When a builder's first year of coverage runs out, we can switch the house over to our own program if it makes sense.

Do you do termite work in Georgia?

No. Most of our customers are in Tennessee, and that's where we do our termite work. The Georgia Department of Agriculture has its own very particular way of doing things, and for the handful of Georgia houses we'd see, it isn't worth the trouble. We still do regular pest control, mosquito control, and hemlock treatments in Georgia. If you're on the Georgia side and need termite help, text us and we'll point you toward someone.

Do you do termite letters for real estate?

Yes, we do termite inspections and NPMA-33 letters for real estate closings. We also have Supra eKEY access for homes that are vacant.