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And welcome to another episode of the Volunteer Rid A Pest podcast with Mike Stewart and Erik Gardner. And I’ve got Erik Gardner, the pest expert in Chattanooga, on the line right now. Erik, are you there?
I’m here. I’m ready to go.
Good, good. Well, there’s lots of different ways to protect a home from termites. Which is the best, most effective method and why is it better?
Well, you’re right, Mike. There are a lot of different ways. There’s basically four ways to protect a home from termite. One is a termite baiting system. These are the little canisters they put in the ground around the house and inside it is poisoned bait. The hope is that the termites, instead of eating your home they will eat this bait, take it back to the colony, pass it around, and kill the colony. Now, I used this system for about 10 years and found that it works about 85% of the time. After doing some research, found that’s about the industry average. Now personally, if I’m going to take someone’s money to protect their home, 85% is not good enough. I want to get as close to 100% as I can. So I’ve moved away from termite baiting.
The next type of termite treatment is a soil treatment and there’s two kinds of those. One is with a short residual termiticide, which usually lasts three to five years. Those are typically your lower cost termite treatments. And a long residual soil treatment that’ll last for 15 plus years. That’s a little … the dirty little secret of termite control. When people go out and give quotes for termites, a lot of times people think, all the treatments are the same. Why is this company $500 and that company’s $1,500? Well, the reason is the material they use. One just doesn’t last nearly as long and is not as effective.
The fourth way is a wood treatment with a product called borate. Now, borate treatments are not always available depending on if the home is completely built, if it’s under construction, everything’s open, you can do the wood application. With homes already built, that’s typically not an option, but in some cases it can be.
Those are basically the four different types. And in my opinion, the best is the long residual soil treatment, because it’s more cost effective, it lasts longer, and it gets the job done.
So if a customer asks you to do one of the four, can you do all four or do you highly recommend what you consider to be best?
We could do all four. I personally don’t do the termite baiting system anymore just because of the fact that it’s not effective 15% of the time.
And again, I don’t want a person to pay me to protect their home, only to have termites. So for that reason I moved away from it. But yeah, we can do all four. But the best one by far is a long residual soil treatment. It just lasts longer and over the course of the life of the treatment, it’s the most inexpensive, most cost-effective.
Well, that’s great information. You know, I’ve seen over the years as a homeowner having those bait systems and I never knew that there was that big a percentage of a failure rate, and that’s enough right there. I don’t even want a 1% chance that I’m going to get termites. So thanks for this great information. How can people get in touch with you at Volunteer Rid A Pest?
Just give us a call at 698-7205, it’s a 423 area code. Or you can visit us online at or you can Google Volunteer Rid A Pest, we’ll pop right up.
Well that’s it for today. Thanks for this helpful tip. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast and all the podcast directories like Apple podcast, Google podcast, Stitcher, even on your home devices. And be sure to listen to Erik Gardner of the Volunteer Rid A Pest podcast for helpful tips to help protect your home.
