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Alabama with Michael and Travis. We do this podcast as a community service for Birmingham, Hoover, Vestavia Hills, Mountain Brook, Helena, Pelham and all other surrounding areas!
Travis McGowin 0:01
Hey, today we want to talk to you about one of the most feared insects if you are a homeowner, and that is termites, Michael, why are termites bad for homeowners?
Michael Wienecke 0:12
Well, the most obvious reason they destroy homes, they, you know, they can they can get in wall voids, they’re undetectable, untraceable. And you know, you typically don’t see them until they bust out of a baseboard or out of sheetrock or something like that. And then you’ve got potentially, you know, 510 1000 bugs flying around your house. So that is terrifying.
Travis McGowin 0:34
Definitely. And, you know, there’s a lot of misconception out there. I’ve had some people tell me before that, well, hey, Travis, I have a brick house. I don’t have to worry about termites. Michael, is that accurate?
Michael Wienecke 0:46
That is 100%. False. Every house has wood in it one way or the other. If it’s a cinderblock Foundation, if it’s a brick, even a true brick house still has wood at the top of it. And termites build these cool little things called Shelter tubes or mud tubes, where they can, you know, they can build it straight up in the air until they reach wood. So they have no problem bypassing any anything like that to get to that area.
Travis McGowin 1:11
Yeah, and you know, a lot of people don’t understand too. I mean, you know, with the age of a house with the longer house has been there. You know, if it’s a foundation home, they’re settling, there’s cracks that develop in the foundation of your house just from the ground shifting underneath it and settling. And that just gives them a nice highway right into your right into your house right up into the wallboard.
Michael Wienecke 1:33
Yeah, all it takes is the size, crack the size of a credit card, and they can sure enough get in there and kind of start working their way towards any wood in your house.
Travis McGowin 1:42
Definitely, well, they they can cause an extreme amount of damage and like you said they can go completely undetected. So Michael, tell us how we get rid of termites. What do we do here at pesquisas? And how do we perform a treatment to ensure that the termite colony if someone has a termite issue, or if the customer wants a preventative termite coverage on their house? How do we do that?
Michael Wienecke 2:03
Yeah, so I’ll start with a preventative because that is going to be the easiest, you know, way to just completely eradicate that problem even before it starts. So we use the Sentricon system. It’s a baiting system that goes around the outside perimeter of the home. Typical stations, you’re looking at about 25 to 30 stations around the home, depending on the size of the house. And what it is, is it’s a bait termite, there are three types of termites you have worker termites, soldier, termites, and reproductive termites. The worker, termites are the only ones that actually have mouthparts to be able to eat, so they eat the bait, and then they take it and feed it back to the other colony members of the termites. What this causes, it causes total colony elimination because those termites start to die slowly from that poisoned food, if you will, being fed back to him. As far as an active termite infestation, you know, we do a full detailed inspection on every home we go to, if we do find an active termite infestation, we use the Sentricon baiting stations, and then we use the Sentricon above ground stations. So for instance, if there’s a shelter tube running up the cinderblock wall in your basement with active termites, we would put that station over that termite colony that would eat that bait and essentially take it back to the the colony, just like the below ground stations, there is a slight chance that sometimes we can’t get that above ground station to the termites. And if that’s the case, we would have to drill and foam a wall void or something like that to do a spot treatment to kill the termites that way,
Travis McGowin 3:35
definitely. So we’ve got several options. But I like what you said. And I totally agree with it, before you kind of went into the elaboration of the treatment. And that is preventative is best because trust me, if you’re listening, nobody wants a termite infestation in your home. And you know, the most frustrating part about it is like we said already, that go undetected, you probably won’t even know they’re there until it’s kind of too late. And the damage has already been done. So we would just say Don’t delay, I would highly recommend you get your house treated for termites.
Michael Wienecke 4:08
Yeah. And I’ve actually had customers that have had termite damage. And they tell me now that they would never not have protection on their home solely because the headache of having to replace the garage door frame or, you know, we’ve had one the largest claim I’ve ever seen, which was $56,000. And it just that’s devastating to a homeowner that you know, potentially half of their home value is gone.
Travis McGowin 4:33
Oh yeah, definitely well, termites, the fear of the homeowner, get your house treated for sure.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Thank you for listening to the Pest Control podcast here in Birmingham, Alabama with Michael and Travis. If you have any questions about what we’ve discussed today, please give us a call at 204-470-8161 and ask for me Michael Weinecke. I’ll be happy to speak with you anytime. And don’t forget to share this podcast with your friends and subscribe to us on Apple, Amazon, Google and Spotify. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time.
