moeronn

I was looking at houses a couple of weeks ago and found one house that was pretty reasonable. The house was pretty much upgraded throughout, except for the bathrooms. The weird thing is, there were holes drilled through the tile floor in the bathrooms. The realtor said that this was done by the termite fumigators. Now, this might make some sense is this house was on a raised foundation, but it was on a concrete slab. Last time I checked, termites don't eat concrete. Anyone know why you might drill holes through a concrete slab? Only thing I could think of would be for stablizing the foundation if there were settling problems. Any other ideas?

gsrblack

I had termite treatment done on my first house. Our house was also on a concrete slab, but they needed to put the chemical on both sides of the stemwall in order to build a barrier of chemicals to keep the termites away. Termites will crawl up the concrete stem wall until they hit wood. Also, they may also crawl up through cracks that are in your concrete. So you want a good barrier around your house to kill them and to keep them away.

But for us, they didn't have to drill inside the house (only where there are pipes coming up at the sinks). They trenched around the outer perimeter of the house and soaked that with chemical. To get to the other side of the stem wall, they actually drilled diagonally from the outside, through the stemwall, in order to pump the chemical to the interior.

moeronn

^^ That makes sense. These holes were in the middle of the house and there is no stem wall. Just a concrete slab. All the pipes are in the walls. Nothing is under the house. Just seemed really fishy to me.

GreenMonster

I've got holes drilled in my concrete basment floor from when the house was treated for 'mites years ago with the "good stuff" that the hippies got outlawed because it killed turtles or some nonsense... (or at least that's what my home inspector told me).

mamboking

Termites in CA and RI? I thought it was more of southeast problem than anywhere else.

doopstr

termites love it here.

gsrblack

probably different types of termites. in the southwest here (AZ and CA), there are problems with subterranium termites....the white ones. those can be treated by chemicals. i think some of the other regions, treatment may require fumigation.

GreenMonster

I'm actually in MA.... but work in RI.. and yeah, we get termites up here too...