- Termites can become dangerous to any wooden construction and any type of building foundation.
- Even if a wood construction is not connected to the ground or soil, termites can build mud tubes on brick walls and concrete walls. The mud tubes can extend from the ground up over many meters to reach an upper wooden floor, and these tubes can be built within a few hours. Mud tubes on wood, fresh loamy soil bulging on the garden ground, or a termite hill indicate the presence of termites at a later stage of their activities. An early stage of activity usually goes unnoticed.
- It is not always the case that a termite infestation occurs and can be seen on the surface of a material such as the surface of a concrete wall, brick wall, wooden wall, or the wooden frame of a door or window. The infestation may have progressed inside the material and is difficult or impossible to see from the outside.
Wood-tapping method: If the material is wood, tapping on the wood will tell you whether the wood is solid or not and has been gouged out by termites. A resulting dull tone indicates solid wood, and a lighter tone indicates hollowed wood. This method can be applied to wood that is lumber (boards, planks, beams, profiled wood, etc., and for any wood used for window frames, door frames, and shelves), but will not provide results for thick pillars of hardwood (as were used for the pavilions, for example). - In the case of a brick or concrete wall, an exclusively internal termite infestation is not directly recognizable. Long, narrow cracks may have formed in brick and concrete that termites use as roads. Such cracks in buildings can be caused by subsequent unilateral ground settling and by earthquakes.
- Unlike in a wall, cracks in a concrete foundation go unnoticed. When such cracks appear in the foundation of a double brick wall (with an empty cavity in between), possible termite infestation may be confined to that cavity. Still, it may go unnoticed for a long time and may only be detected when the cavity is adjacent to structures, whose component is wood, e.g. wooden window frames. Only the bedrooms of Plumeria Bungalow and Dillenia Bungalow have double walls built for better insulation, all of them are with wooden windows and doors. The integrated wooden parts, such as window frames and door frames, in these bedrooms, need to be subjected to a thorough and repeated wood-tapping check at least every few months.
- In order to impair the activity of termites on the foundations and wooden parts of our buildings, we have commissioned a pest control company to spray against this pest four times a year as a precaution. Usually, the company's service workers will spray along the exterior of the house foundations and the base of wooden construction, e.g., pillars. They usually do not need to go inside rooms to spray. Therefore, it is of particular importance that the tenant periodically inspects the interior spaces for termite infestation, by visual inspection and using the wood-tapping method.
- We shall notify our guests and tenants of the date and time that the pest control company workers will come to spray, usually 1–2 days in advance. Their arrival time is usually set at 1 p.m. or the early afternoon, and all work is usually completed within 1–2 hours. If it rains, the company can postpone their arrival, usually to the next day or the day after that. Tenants and guests are advised to remove food, dishes, clothing, pet food, and pet food bowls from the outside and keep them indoors for at least a few hours during and after spraying. Tenants and guests do not have to be present during the spraying work; they can stay in the rooms or in the spacious community garden or leave the property for a few hours and use their absence to go shopping, for example. Windows and doors should remain closed during the spraying work and for a few hours afterward.
- Regardless of the pest control company's duty, we ourselves have to check the houses regularly, usually from the outside, to see if there have been any termite attacks. We ask our guests and tenants, especially those who stay longer than a month, to occasionally check certain areas (e.g., brick and concrete walls, a connection of wooden parts with concrete or bricks of a building in which they live) for termite attacks.
- As a precautionary measure, guests and tenants are requested not to put or permanently deposit any wood, wooden tools (like brooms), bamboo poles, rattan furniture, cardboard or cardboard boxes, paper, or leaf litter, on the ground around a building.
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| A mud tube less than a finger wide. Mud tubes are warning signs of an ongoing termite infestation. Termites can even build such mud tubes on smooth concrete walls with a length of 2 m and more to reach their food source: wood. |
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| A mud tube in a concrete wall-ceiling corner: Apparently, the termites have come from a long crack or hollow inside the concrete. |
