Termite Damage: When Should You Call in a Professional?

Termite damage can threaten the most vital parts of your home. These include joists and beams that hold up floors and other parts of the structure. Unfortunately, these parts of the home are also oftentimes those that wires and pipes are run along, meaning that termite damage could potentially disrupt or destroy your home’s electrical or plumbing system if part of a wall or floor collapses.

You can repair termite damage yourself, but be ready for a very big job. There are some cases where you can get by with more simple repairs, but these won’t work for all cases of termite damage.

In the worst cases, termite damage completely takes the strength out of the wood that’s been attacked by the pests. If these include load-bearing features of the home, you’ll want professional assistance, and fast. There may also be damage to wood that has wires running through it or that is used as a support for plumbing features. Again, termite damage to these parts of a home usually requires that you hire a professional termite control company to fix it. Without professional assistance, you may just make things worse, and endanger your own or your family’s safety if a termite-infested wall or ceiling collapses.

Superficial termite damage that isn’t extensive can be fixed by running new wood along the old wood that was damaged. There is an important caveat here: You have to make sure the termite damage is not ongoing. Make sure that you have a professional kill off the termite colony before you fix anything. Otherwise, you’re basically just providing a new meal for the termites already living in your house.

Termite damage tends to spread quickly, so any new wood put up in an infested home is certain to be made into a snack very quickly by these destructive and tenacious little pests.