How to Get Rid of Termites
Termites feed on the wood inside your walls and they do it out of sight, so a colony is often well established before anyone notices. Here is what draws them in, what the common home remedies actually do, and how an active infestation gets dealt with.
They eat from the inside, so the damage comes first.
Finding termites in or around your property is unsettling, and the first instinct is to go looking for something to spray. Termites get their nutrients from cellulose, the fibre in plants and wood, which means the framing, sills, and trim of a house are food. They work behind the walls, so the problem is usually well along before a homeowner sees any sign of it.
The short answer to how to get rid of termites is that an active colony is a job for a licensed termite technician. The longer answer, which is what this page is for, covers why termites pick a house, what the popular home remedies can and cannot do, and the prevention steps that are worth your time. If you want to know what the treatment itself looks like, our termite control page walks through it.
Food, water, and a way in
Termites go where they can find wood to eat, moisture, and shelter. Different species want different wood. Drywood termites live inside sound, dry timber. Dampwood termites need wood that is already wet and are rarely a problem in houses. Subterranean termites, which account for nearly all the structural damage in Texas, nest in the soil, often near trees or against a foundation, and build mud tubes to travel between the ground and the wood they are feeding on.
Like most insects, termites need water. They pull it from damp soil, from cracks and seepage around the foundation, and from the wood itself if it is wet. That is why warm, humid regions have more termite pressure than dry ones, and why the wet side of a house, the side with the dripping hose bib or the overflowing gutter, is usually where an infestation starts.
What the home remedies actually do
These are the methods that come up in every search on the subject. Most kill the termites they touch and leave the colony untouched. Here is each one, honestly.
Vinegar
Vinegar kills a termite it is poured onto and nothing else. It does not travel through a gallery, it does not reach a nest, and household vinegar is weak enough that even the direct effect is unreliable. It is a cleaning product, not a treatment.
Boric acid
Boric acid is a stomach poison for insects that walk through it or eat treated material, and it has a long history in termite-resistant wood treatments. Dusted into cracks it will kill the workers that cross it, but subterranean termites travel inside mud tubes and wood, not across your floor, so very few of them ever meet it.
Wet cardboard trap
Termites eat cellulose, and a stack of damp cardboard will draw foragers. Carrying the stack outside and burning it removes those workers. A mature colony has tens of thousands to millions of them, and the ones you caught are replaced the same week. It is a way to confirm activity, not to end it.
Orange oil
Orange oil contains d-limonene, which kills termites on contact and is sometimes injected into drywood galleries by professionals. It has no residual and does not spread, so it only affects the gallery it is put into. Against a subterranean colony with its nest in the soil it does nothing at all.
Sunlight
Termites dry out quickly in direct sun, which is why they travel inside tubes and wood. If the infested item is a piece of furniture or a loose board, setting it in full sun for a few days can clear it. You cannot carry a wall stud or a sill plate outside, and that is where the damage usually is.
Perimeter barrier
A continuous treated zone in the soil around the foundation is the standard professional treatment for subterranean termites. It is done by trenching and rodding at measured volumes with products labelled for that use. Done by hand with a retail product it leaves gaps, and termites find gaps.
Diatomaceous earth
The silica in diatomaceous earth scratches an insect's outer layer and dehydrates it, and it works on insects that walk across a dry dusted surface. Termites do not. They stay in moist soil and wood, and the dust stops working the moment it gets damp.
Mulch removal
This one is worth doing. Wood mulch piled against a slab holds moisture and food in exactly the spot termites look for a way in. Pull it back from the foundation, keep it shallow, or switch to gravel or rubber mulch along the house.
Parasitic nematodes
These microscopic roundworms infect and kill termites in a lab and in some garden pests. In practice they need the right soil temperature and moisture to survive, they have to find the colony on their own, and field results against structural termites have been inconsistent. Not something to rely on.
One thing not to do: spray an aerosol insecticide into a mud tube, a swarm, or a hole where you have seen termites. A contact spray kills the few you can see and alarms the rest, and a disturbed subterranean colony can split and move, so you end up with two problems in two places instead of one in a known spot. If you find live termites, leave them where they are, take a photo, and have the area inspected while the evidence is still fresh.
The pattern across the list is the same. Termites live where you cannot reach, in the soil and inside the wood, and a remedy applied to a surface stops at the surface. The two items that pay off are the ones that change the conditions around the house, mulch and moisture, and those are prevention, not treatment.
Helpful tips for keeping termites out
Once an infestation has been dealt with, these are the measures that make the next one less likely. They all come down to keeping the wood dry and the soil at arm's length.
Avoid moisture
Termites need water and they find it in damp soil and wet wood. Fix leaks and water damage promptly, make sure the ground slopes away from the foundation, and keep crawl spaces and attics ventilated so wood stays dry.
Clear wood away from the house
Firewood, lumber, old fence pickets, and stumps near the house give a colony a place to feed before it finds the structure. Store wood about 20 feet from the house and off the ground so it stays dry and out of soil contact.
Choose the right yard materials
Wood mulch holds moisture and is food. Along the foundation, gravel or rubber mulch does the same job for the beds without feeding anything. If you keep wood mulch, keep it a few inches back from the slab and no more than a couple of inches deep.
Maintain pipes and gutters
Clogged gutters dump water next to the foundation, and that constantly damp strip of soil is where subterranean colonies start. Clean gutters, downspouts, and splash blocks regularly and send water several feet away from the house.
Add an annual inspection to the list. Termites are quiet, and the signs that do show up are easy to miss or mistake for something else. Our guide to the signs of termites covers what to look for between visits: mud tubes on the slab, shed wings on a sill, paint that bubbles, and wood that sounds hollow when tapped.
What a professional treatment does differently
Homeowners who work through the list above usually see a reprieve at best. The termites they could reach are gone, the colony is not, and the feeding resumes somewhere less visible. A professional treatment is built around reaching the colony, not the termites in view.
For subterranean termites that means one of two approaches, or both. A liquid termiticide applied to the soil around and under the foundation creates a treated zone the termites cannot cross without picking up the product, and the modern non-repellent products are carried back through the colony by the workers that walk through them. A bait system places monitoring stations around the perimeter; once termites are feeding, the bait is carried back to the nest and the colony declines over the following weeks. Which one fits depends on the construction of the house, the species, and how far the colony has spread, which is what the inspection is for. Our article on how long it takes to get rid of termites explains the timeline for each.
Drywood termites, which live inside the wood with no soil contact, are treated differently: the infested wood is located and treated directly, or replaced. They are much less common in Texas than the subterranean species, but an inspector will tell you which you have before anything is applied.
Every product is applied by a licensed Texas technician following its label, and the work is followed by monitoring, because a termite treatment is a program rather than a single visit. If you have found termites or the signs of them, the sooner the inspection happens the less wood they will have eaten by the time the treatment goes in.
Leave the spray on the shelf and get the house inspected
Our termite technicians can confirm the species, find where the colony is feeding, and lay out the treatment that fits your house. It starts with a phone call.
Keep reading
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