Insect infestation wood posts and flooring - solutions here in Thailand.

[notrub]

A friend has some sort of insects eating the wood of her home.  In other countries there are strong insecticides to spray onto or inject into wood that can cure the problem. I have done this work myself with varying levels of success (some to none).  There are also companies that come and do the work to eradicate the problem.

 

Any comments and/or suggestions for products, anti bug companies etc. here in Thailand will be very welcome.  Thank you🙏🏼

 

 

[OneMoreFarang]

You can try, but as far as I know you will have great difficulties to get rid of them without ripping out everything wood.

And be aware that termites eat wood inside out. Maybe from outside it still looks fine, but inside the wood most of it is gone.

I don't know if they eat wood only like that, but it seems it is common that they do it like that.

 

 

[Baht Simpson]

2 minutes ago, OneMoreFarang said:

You can try, but as far as I know you will have great difficulties to get rid of them without ripping out everything wood.

And be aware that termites eat wood inside out. Maybe from outside it still looks fine, but inside the wood most of it is gone.

I don't know if they eat wood only like that, but it seems it is common that they do it like that.

 

 

I can confirm this. We had an undetected termite problem when they burrowed up inside a wooden pillar outside the house and chewed away at the wooden roof beams. There's very little you can do about it other than check all wood structures often. 

[Crossy]

Assuming termites, they are very difficult to get rid of, the actual nest with the queen is probably underground and the damage is done by the workers collecting food.

 

Once you can see them you are in trouble.

 

The sprays kill the ones you can see, but there are millions that you can't see or get to.

 

I've had success with this stuff https://www.lazada.co.th/products/termi-eco-i4176962274-s16956768777.html? but it's not instant, it needs time for the workers to take it back to the nest.

 

Unfortunately, by the time the nest was eradicated, so was the chicken house.

[Muhendis]

If the infestation is wood boring beetles and irf you can see the holes (evidenced by a little pile of sawdust below the entry hole), then you can use Chaindrite  https://www.toagroup.com/en/products/wood-coatings/chaindrite/273/chaindrite

Trouble is, you may not be able to see all the holes without doing some dismantling.

[OneMoreFarang]

22 minutes ago, Baht Simpson said:

There's very little you can do about it other than check all wood structures often.

Try to poke holes in those structures. If you succeed, then because the termites eat already what was under the surface. 

[Denim]

In a village I used to live in they ate a whole house !!  In the end the owners could do nothing except move out and demolish the whole house. The wood from this was carted away from the house to some fields and burnt. The ground was cleared and leveled of all posts then treated . They had to repest this a few times before they could consider rebuilding on the same plot. With all pests and vermin you have to be constantly vigilant. Once this get out of hand it is very difficult to make headway.

[Crossy]

Task A - Is to identify exactly what is doing the eating, treatment is different between wood-borers and termites.

[lopburi3]

There are pest control firms everywhere in Thailand and they can do a fair job - but it will need repeating often and involves underground spray as well as house spray.  Have not seen any use the tent system here however.  So it is open deadly chemicals everywhere on your property.  We had done until exterminator become a monk to make up for all the life he took.  

 

Much better in long term is to avoid wood if that is an option.  Cement and tile if you can.

[notrub]

Thanks for your comments.  I have had a little bit of experience with wood boring beetles and with those we had some success soaking the infested wood with a nasty chemical product and also injected it by drilling small holes and using hypodermic needle.  That fixed up local infestations but I wouldn't know how to start on a whole house.  

 

This house is in Satuek, Surin area.  Can anyone suggest a company to help with this problem please?

 

Thank you🙏🏼

[lopburi3]

7 minutes ago, notrub said:

This house is in Satuek, Surin area.  Can anyone suggest a company to help with this problem please?

Probably best to have Thai ask others in the area for such information.  The village head may know?  Police may know?  Monks may know?  Housing construction crew chief might know?  Expect might easily find on social media also (but I try to avoid that sin).  

[Crossy]

2 hours ago, lopburi3 said:

Probably best to have Thai ask others in the area for such information.  The village head may know?  Police may know?  Monks may know?  Housing construction crew chief might know?  Expect might easily find on social media also (but I try to avoid that sin).  

 

Add to those the local bike-taxi chaps, they know everyone and everything!

[lopburi3]

7 minutes ago, Crossy said:

 

Add to those the local bike-taxi chaps, they know everyone and everything!

True but not sure how many you would find in that area with population under 12,000 for 25 villages:

1.    Satuek    สตึก    25    11,481

[MJCM]

The result of unprotected wood in our Kitchen and termites eating hit.

 

Destroyed the whole kitchen

 

 

That brown area is where the termites hit, that steel you see is the electricity mains coming into the house to the Consumer Unit.

[MJCM]

@notrub

 

Ask Bob (former RuangsangThai) he uses a Company for his house in Satuek (Buriram) and is very pleased with the service.

 

The company is in Buriram

 

If you don't have his phone number, PM me.

[brianthainess]

Available on Lazada . Kills everything double dose is needed for those very tiny wasps.

[notrub]

Thanks MJCM.  I know Bob and will give him a call.🙏🏼

[xylophone]

3 hours ago, MJCM said:

The result of unprotected wood in our Kitchen and termites eating hit.

 

Destroyed the whole kitchen

 

 

That brown area is where the termites hit, that steel you see is the electricity mains coming into the house to the Consumer Unit.

As some others have said, once you've got a termite problem, you are pretty well stuffed (mostly) and even if your house is not a wooden one!

 

A friend of mine in Australia, on the Gold Coast, had a very lovely large house built on top of the land he had purchased and he and his wife and children lived there quite happily for a while, many years in fact, until he noticed that his automatic garage door (metal) was ceasing to close properly, and on close inspection he noticed that one of the wooden supports for it showed signs of infestation.

 

So he got the local pest control around who did a search on the house and found out something quite alarming – – not only had termites infested the wooden supports in the garage, they had managed to find their way inside a couple of wardrobes, and also in the dining room, eating away the wooden sills by the windows.

 

He was amazed at this because the house was built on a concrete floor, but the pest controller explained what had happened. There had been a crack in the concrete floor after it was laid and not only that, the foundations (that concrete) had been built on an area that was cleared and which had very large tree roots still embedded in it.

 

He reasoned that there had been a nest in that cleared area and the termites had found their way through the cracks in the concrete, and in some cases around the outside of the house.

 

The pest control guy carried out a lot of work on the inside of the house and on the outside, as well as laying a network of pipes along the outside of the house (underground and covered and only accessible for inspection) into which the poisoning solution was introduced and often topped up.

A building inspection some years later found the home to be free of termites, so my friend was able to sell it successfully, but he did disclose (I think he had to by law) that the house had been treated for termites.

 

They are absolute buggers to get rid of, so I wish you all the very best in your endeavours.
 

[sometimewoodworker]

36 minutes ago, xylophone said:

He was amazed at this because the house was built on a concrete floor, but the pest controller explained what had happened. There had been a crack in the concrete floor after it was laid and not only that, the foundations (that concrete) had been built on an area that was cleared and which had very large tree roots still embedded in it.

Just a FWIW you don’t need a visible crack for termites to exploit. Virtually all concrete has cracks, often virtually invisible, and termites will enter through those. This is why we have very few items in our house which are built in and made of wood, but even then they are all treated with Chandrite before installing.

[MJCM]

6 minutes ago, sometimewoodworker said:

This is why we have very few items in our house which are built in and made of wood, but even then they are all treated with Chandrite before installing.

 

And that is what the installer / builder forgot to do, but he still charged a ton of money for the Kitchen.

 

We have outside the same house a seating area made from wood over the pond, but we put lots of layers of the Chaindrite Wood Preservative on it and up to now it's still oke

 

This stuff

[sometimewoodworker]

3 hours ago, MJCM said:

And that is what the installer / builder forgot to do, but he still charged a ton of money for the Kitchen.

The problem is that it costs quite a lot of time to properly add insect protection and once built it is virtually impossible to know if it has been done. The time is a cost and you will only find out years, if you are lucky, later 

 

I am absolutely sure that the builder of my kitchen base units did protect all the wood used both before cutting and after building, it added over 2 weeks to the time required.