Inspecting for white ants is just a matter of looking for the unusual.
This is the inspection process:
When white ants get into a structure they change things. They conserve humidity so, to enter, they build tunnels from the soil over foundations to get to the wood their scout discovered weeks before. Once white ants are feeding inside timber they often work close to the surface.
Listen:
If you touch hollowed-out timber, you’ll recognise the different sound to solid timber. Tapping all the timber you can reach is important. Sometimes tapping will get a response from soldier white ants inside the timber… they jerk their heads and make a sound like an old fashioned watch-winder ratchet. It’s a defence response but you will be interested in attack if you hear it.
Look:
Shining a torch obliquely will show shadows on an uneven surface. Often soil or wood joined by their saliva is found as packing between joints, between the timber and the wall or other surfaces and where they ate too close to the surface and the timber split.
Your tools:
a bright torch, a stepladder to get into the roof And a cloth to wipe your dirty finger marks from the manhole cover as you come down and a knife or small screwdriver to insert into suspicious wood to check if white ants are busy inside.
You could make a long-handled sounding implement to tap or run along skirting boards without having to stoop or to save some crawling to reach timbers in the roof or under the floor. It is easy to make a tapper with some curtain rod fitted with a round plastic finial or knob. Golf irons or putters might be more available to you.
Inspecting outside:
Poke about in your garden moving the top layers of mulch and leaf litter. You are looking for white insects about 5-7mm long (like white ants!). Look at plant stakes, fences, wooden steps, retaining walls, posts, wooden seats and you should tilt or lift plant pots; potting mix is high in wood fibre and may attract white ants. Damper areas are more likely to have active white ants.
If you have a concrete slab-on-ground floor, now is the time to check every weep hole for white ant activity. The tunnels if any, will probably follow the mortar joint between the bricks, or if no bricks…straight up and in. If plants such as creepers or other ground covers are blocking your view, it is time to cut them back or remove them — your house is at stake!
Look for possible ‘bridges’ that allow white ants to traverse across from soil to the building. These bridges take many forms: pergolas, pool pump screens and pump houses, kennels, cubby houses, fences, gateposts, firewood, stacked timber.
If you find anything suspicious, remember to be cautious and look carefully.
Alive and working white ants are to be preserved if possible because they are the ones that can take bait back to kill off the colony.
Inspecting underneath:
If you have a house you can get underneath, now is the time. The good thing about suspended flooring is that there is more space between the timber in the floor and the white ants in the soil and you will be able to detect any tunnels up the foundation walls or piers/stumps.
Pay particular attention to corners, damp areas, chimney bases, and the top of the foundation walls under bathrooms, laundry and patios. Your stored treasures such as boxes, taxation papers, bits of wood that might come in handy one day could contain feeding white ants.
Look carefully and move everything gently. If you find feeding white ants, you may be able to bait them at that spot.
Inspecting Inside:
Start at the front door and begin tapping the architraves and skirting boards looking and listening for hollowed wood. Shine the torch along the timbers. (It is easier to detect uneven surfaces in oblique light).
Keep going right (or left) running your tapper/putter along every moulding, window and door frame you pass until you are back at the front door.
You will shift the sofa, the beds and you will look in the built-in wardrobes and the linen press – won’t you? (Professionals don’t do this).
Inspecting the roof:
If you haven’t found white ants by now during your inspection, you may feel it a waste of time and energy to go up in the roof. Why bother? …because white ants may have gone straight up the studs into the roof without hollowing out the interior mouldings.
Sure you won’t excavate every ceiling joist or rafter from the insulation and you can’t see under sarking, but you can crawl/walk/clamber along and shine your torch along the trusses looking for mud tunnels or mud packing in the joints, particularly over the ‘wet’ rooms: bathrooms, laundry and kitchen.
Who knows — you may find something else important while you are up there such as daylight coming in through a cracked tile, rats, possums, a fire hazard from insulation over the downlights, etc.
Summary
You might have chemical and physical barriers; you may have already killed off a colony, but believe me, since Captain Arthur Phillip had his first tent pegs eaten by white ants in 1888, white ants have found a million ways to get to the wood in Australian buildings.
Inspecting for white ants at least once a year, will give you a chance to find them before a door falls off or a broom goes through a skirting board.
I suggest you inspect during the first week of spring or the first week of autumn, because it is not as hot up in the roof and not freezing underneath. Also at that time of year, if you find white ant galleries, they are more likely to be occupied. Hot timbers in a roof may be vacated during the day when you inspect and you’ll miss out on possibly hearing their return tapping.
Subterranean white ants almost never form a nest in a building; the major pest species form their nests in hollow trees, in the soil adjacent to timber on the ground (such as retaining walls, stacked firewood, etc.) or they build mounds either on the ground, up in tree branches or on posts.
NOTE: If you find white ants in a building and you also find a nest outside, destroy the nest physically and then check to see if the activity inside ceases in 2-3 weeks. If so, it is more than likely that the white ants inside were coming from the outside nest you destroyed… and they can’t survive without their nest.
