Termite signs, pre vs post-construction treatment, and the warranty

Termites do not announce themselves. By the time you notice a door frame crumbling under a fingernail, they have usually been feeding for a year or more. The signs are there earlier if you know what to look for, and in Nellore — warm, humid, and with a long wet season — you should look twice a year: once before the monsoon and once after.

The signs

Mud tubes. Pencil-thin tunnels of dried mud running up a wall, along a skirting, inside a cupboard, up the side of a plinth, or across a ceiling corner. These are the highways termites build to travel from the soil to the wood without drying out. They are the single most reliable sign. Break a small section; if it is rebuilt within a few days, the colony is active.

Hollow wood. Tap a door frame, window frame or a wooden cupboard back with a screwdriver handle. Sound wood gives a dull solid knock; termite-eaten wood sounds papery. Often the paint is intact and the wood behind it is gone.

Paint that bubbles or ripples on a wooden surface or along the bottom of a wall, with no water source nearby to explain it.

Discarded wings on a windowsill or near a light after the first heavy rains — the winged termites swarm from an established colony nearby, which may be under your floor.

Doors and windows that suddenly stick because the frame has warped from the moisture the termites bring in.

Sawdust-like droppings in small piles usually point to drywood termites in a piece of furniture, which is a different, smaller problem.

Why Nellore homes get them

Subterranean termites need warm soil and moisture, and they get both here for most of the year. Ground-floor flats and independent houses with wooden frames sitting on the plinth are the most exposed. Leaking bathroom pipes, a garden bed built up against the wall, firewood or cardboard stored on the ground floor, and a plinth that is below the outside ground level after road raising all give them a route in. The north-east monsoon saturates the soil and is when activity jumps.

Pre-construction vs post-construction

Pre-construction is done while building: the soil under the foundation, along the plinth, and around the pipes and the base of walls is treated before the floor slab is laid, creating a continuous barrier termites cannot cross. If you are building or doing a ground-floor renovation that opens the floor, this is the time — it is cheaper, more thorough and lasts longer than anything done afterwards.

Post-construction is what applies to a finished home. The technician drills small holes along the junction of the floor and the walls, at intervals around the inside and outside of the building, injects termiticide into the soil below, and seals the holes. Wooden frames that show activity are drilled and treated directly. Either treatment is ₹2,499 on our rate card; the technician confirms the scope after seeing the building, and a large house or one with outbuildings may need more than the standard area covers.

What a warranty usually means

In this trade the warranty is a promise of re-treatment: if live termites appear inside the treated area during the warranty period, the technician comes back and treats again at no cost. Ask for three things in writing before work starts: the length of the warranty, exactly which areas were treated, and what you need to do to keep it valid (usually not breaking the barrier with new digging, and reporting activity promptly).

What a warranty does not usually cover: replacing a door frame that was already eaten, furniture you bring in afterwards, a new room or wall built after the treatment, or termites arriving through a gap the contractor left untreated on your instruction. If a price seems much lower than usual, the warranty is often where the difference is.

What you can do yourself

• Fix the bathroom and kitchen leaks. Dry soil is your best defence.
• Keep a gap between the garden soil and the wall; do not pile earth against the plinth.
• Store firewood, cardboard and old newspapers off the ground floor.
• Tap the frames and look for tubes in March and again in January.
• Do not paint over a tube or fill a hollow frame with putty and hope.

When to call

A single active mud tube, a hollow-sounding frame, or wings after rain — any one of these is the signal. Termites do not stop on their own, and the damage between noticing and acting is the expensive part.