Identify
What are the signs of termites?
Signs of termites start where the house meets the ground. Look for a pencil-width mud tube on the foundation, indoor swarmers or a pile of equal-length wings on a sill, and wood that sounds hollow when you tap it.
A swarm from a stump in the yard does not mean the house is infested. Indoor swarmers usually do.
Key takeaways
- Start at the soil line. Attic sawdust is a different insect.
- Pencil-width mud on concrete, piers, or joists is a subterranean tube.
- Indoor swarmers or a pile of equal-length wings on a sill usually mean the house already has a colony.
- A swarm off a stump or woodpile in the yard does not, by itself, mean the house is infested.
- This is a homeowner check, not a wood-destroying organism report.
Mississippi State boils the house to three clues: swarmers coming out of the building, mud tubes on the foundation, and damaged wood. Colonies can feed for years before any of those show.
Start at the soil line
Walk the foundation, the crawl, the garage slab, the porch pier. Kentucky puts the tube at about pencil width, made of soil, running from ground to wood. That is subterranean work. Drywood termites live in the lumber itself and skip the soil line. They leave sand-like pellets under a tiny hole in trim.
A neat pile of sawdust under a sill is carpenter ants. They excavate wood and dump the shavings. Termites eat the wood. They do not leave a tidy pile.
Indoor wings, not the porch light
Kentucky: winged termites coming out inside a house almost always mean an infestation that warrants a licensed look. They head for light, so you find them on a window or a pile of shed wings on the sill. Swarmers live about a day. Vacuum them. The colony in the soil is still there. When that flight usually happens: when do termites swarm.
A swarm in the yard from a stump or a woodpile does not automatically mean the house is infested. Swarmers next to the foundation or out of a patio joint are a different story. Get the waist and the wings right before you buy a termite job. Termites have a thick waist, straight antennae, and four wings the same length.
Tap a sill or a porch post. Hollow along the grain, with dried mud in the channels, is termite feeding. The painted face can still look fine.
Log the side of the house and a photo in the sighting log before you scrape or paint. Next steps: how to get rid of termites. Size a termite job in the estimator and read termite treatment cost. Contact for a referral path. Typical US ranges, not a bid. A blog checklist is not a WDO report.