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Hello, this is Ben with Ben’s Pest Control podcast. And today we’re gonna do a show about dry wood termites. And I kind of want to explain a situation that I had that I think hopefully as we go along will relate to what I see with dry wood termites. And the situation that I use is when my wife and I got married, we bought a vehicle minivan. We knew we were going to have kids and so we went practical anyways, we bought this minivan, and with the minivan, we bought an extended warranty. And I tell people that so we, we bought this warranty. And I remember we, one day the power windows stopped working and the driver side and I took it to the dealership, and they told me, okay, your deductible is $50. And we’ll fix the window. And so I did I paid $50. And they fixed the window. Anyways, like a week went by and all sudden, the window on my van stopped working again. And I didn’t know why. And so I took it back to the dealership, and they told me Oh, it’s a different part that’s broken now, and we’re gonna replace that, but it’s another $50 deductible. So I said, Okay. And then a few weeks later, after I had my van back for the second time, and now I’ve paid $100. I’m driving down the road, and the window doesn’t work again. So now I’m getting upset. And I remember I went to the service manager, and I said, you know, there’s something wrong here. You guys have had my minivan two times before to fix the window, the windows still not working. I don’t understand why. So he calls me back. And he says, Okay, Mr. cell, we’ve looked at the van. And what we found is, there’s another part that is closely related to the first two parts that is bad. And so I said to him, I said, Well, were all these parts bad to begin with. And he said, Well, when we tested it only one part and completely failed, the other parts were still operational, even if they didn’t look like they were in good shape. But they were still working. And I said, Okay. He says, to me, the deal with the warranty companies, we only replace the part that’s broken. And I’m like, but what if I was another customer who didn’t have a warranty? If I had brought it in? What would you have done? And he said, we would have told you the whole thing needed to be replaced? Because it had some damage to it. And I’m like, so why did you treat me any differently. And he kept going back to Well, this is our agreement with the warranty company. And I thought to myself, well, that’s garbage in my opinion, because I’m the customer and I wanted you to fix it right the first place, I didn’t want to bring my car in three times.
And I surely didn’t want to have to pay $150 in deductibles. To fix what was wrong, I feel like the car should have been fixed right and taken care of. Now, let me get to the point of how this relates to dry wood termites. So with dry wood termites, homeowners are given a few options. That that exists, usually you can fumigate your house, which is to put the tent over the house, you gas the structure. And as long as the tent is done properly, the termites in the entire structure are dead, or you can spot treat your house. Now what I tell people is spot treating your house has its time in place. But what can happen is I take dry wood termites, so if you fumigate your house, the day that they take the 10th off, all of the termites in your house are dead. But as soon as they take that 10 down and they cleared it safe for you to come back. dry wood, termites can swarm find another spot and start a new colony in your house. And that new colony can take five years to reach maturity, to where you’re going to see evidence or signs that there’s activity in your house again. So you could have a situation where you get termites back in your house this year. And then next year, when they swarm again, you could have a king and queen find another spot and they could get into your house and they could start a colony. And then next year you could have the same thing and so on and so on. So ultimately, at the end of the five years, you could hypothetically have multiple colonies in different spots in your house. So when you fumigate you’re treating the whole structure and the whole thing is resolved. If you’re spot trading, you’re only spot trading the places that you see activity right now. So a lot of times I’ll tell people if you can afford it, your best bet is to go with the fumigation because you know your whole structure then is taken care of
give you an example of a good friend of mine.
We had these friends who live down in Fort Lauderdale where dry wood termites are extremely prevalent. And he called me up and he sent me a picture of somebody He was having and we picked it up and I said, Oh, you’re having dry wood termites. And he said to me, Well, they’re in this doorframe. So I said, Okay. And he went out and he paid a couple $100, I believe, almost 500. And he had the door spa treated. And I said to myself, well, you should really consider fumigating. And he’s like, well, I don’t want to spend that money right now. I said, Okay. So a year later, he gets some in a different spot in his house. And he calls me up. He’s like, Ben, I think I have again, but this is a different part of the house. And I said, Okay, well, it’s on you what you do, but but you are covered. And he decided to do a spa treatment again. And I said, Okay, so the following year, he calls me up. He goes, Ben, I think I am again. Now this is a completely different spot in the house where I have them. And I said, you really should consider just fumigating the house. Well, he finally decided to fumigate the house. And I want to guess that he paid probably close to $2,000 service house fumigated. But what was frustrating was he actually probably spent close to 800 or $1,000, in spa treatments, the two years prior trying to prevent spending the $2,000 on the fumigation. So in the end, I ended up feeling really bad for him. Because it seems to me like he he threw away money that it could have been better spent. Now, understand something I am not in business, nor am I to tell you what’s best for you. And there are lots of situations where spa treatments are the only thing that makes sense. So I want to go into that a little bit. Because we do offer spa treatments, I currently don’t fumigate. So I am when I tell people to fumigate, I’m literally talking you into potentially using somebody else to treat your house. We do however, offer spa treatments. Now when you spot treat, there, there are a few things one is fumigation can take three to four days where you’re out of the house. Well, you’ve got people who may have elderly or sick people who live with them, and they can’t relocate the people. And if you can’t relocate the people, you may be left with no other option. But to spot treat at this point in time, I’ve had people who have said to me, you know, Ben, the bills just don’t allow for me to go out and spend $2,000 right now. So I’ve got to do something to stop these termites. And in that situation, then they will have a spa treatment. Some people and rightfully so are just very afraid of the gas that goes with doing a full house treatment. So it’s really boils down to Oh, I’m sorry. Another example I’ve almost forgot there for a second was I got a call about a month ago and went out to look at a condo building on the ocean here. And the condo building had some dry wood termites in a doorframe. But we are talking a five story building. Actually, I believe it was six because there were parking garages on the first floor. And then they had five floors above that. And it was a massive building. So to treat one unit, there’s no way to do that in fumigating. So they were like, we’re not going to test the whole building. And it probably in their case would have cost 10s of 1000s of dollars to do it. Plus getting everybody out. So it’s it’s not feasible in that situation. So they decided to go with a spa treatment and that that made complete sense. So at bends, we do offer the spa treatments, we can come in and treat the termite galleries and and do those treatments for people. But I just want to make sure that people who who have dry wood termites at least consider and keep in mind that the full fumigation is the way you make sure they’re not in other parts of your house. And that you know you’re spending your money the way you feel is best and if spa treatment is that that is awesome. If having your whole house treated makes more sense to you. That’s great too. And that Ben’s we’re more than happy to refer some local companies out that that we’ve used the or had our customers use. So this is Ben with Ben’s pest control. If you are interested in a free inspection of your house a free 58 point inspection, please feel free to give us a call at 772-878-1972 Thank you and have a great day.
