How to Prevent Termites from Entering Your Home

Finding termites around your home is never a good thing. However, if you take some carefully calculated precautions, you can take some preventative measures to ensure they never have a chance from entering your home in the first place.

Take a look at these 8 extremely helpful termite prevention tips to keep your home protected from this inconvenient pest!

8 Termite Prevention Tips for Your Home

1.) Inspect Your Home’s Foundation

When trying to prevent termites from entering your home, one very important tip is to keep an eye out for the foundation of your home. In particular, keep an eye out for mud tubes.

Mud Tubes are created by termites as a way for them to gain access to their food. If you see cracked and/or bubbling paint, tap on it. If it sounds hollow, there’s a pretty good chance you may have caught the beginnings of a termite infiltration to your home.

2.) Stay on Top of Home Repairs

If you have old roof shingles, rotted fascias, and damaged soffits, you’re practically inviting termites to commingle with you at your home. Rotten wood is a prime location for termites to live and thrive.

Repair any damages to your house as soon as they are made to prevent not only termites, but other pesky creatures from reaching the interior of your home and making a nest.  After all, the last thing that you want is to deal with an ant infestation, rodents behind the walls, or wasps in the fascia.

3.) Monitor Your Home’s Wood Exterior

When you’re making your home repairs, remember to pay extra special attention to all of the exterior areas that are made of wood. This would include door frames, skirting, windows, fascia, and anywhere else that could be made of wood for noticeable changes.

Also, try your best to keep minimally an 18-20 inch gap between the ground and any of the wood portions of your home. Doing so, you will help reduce the risk of termite infestation around your home.

4.) Store Firewood Away from Your Home

If you have a fireplace in your home, chances are there is firewood near your home. When storing firewood, keep it at least 20-30 feet away from your home (or more if possible). This will give you a good distance where, if termites decide to infest your collection of firewood, they will remain a safe distance away from your home.

5.) Reduce Moisture

Termites tend to thrive in humid environments, so it seems only natural to reduce the moisture/humidity levels around your home to help create a not-so-welcoming environment for them to live in.

Try using a dehumidifier around your home and keep the house at cooler temperatures. Creating a more effective ventilation system in your home as well as cracking windows and using fans can help tremendously, too.

6.) Redirect Water Away from the House

By redirecting water away from your house, you not only reduce the risk of flood damage, you protect your home’s foundation, and reduce the risk of creating an environment termites love to live in.

Install gutters, splash blocks, and functioning downspouts not only add protectants for your home, they increase your home’s value which could (if you decide to resell later down the road) create the foundations for a bidding war on your home.

7.) Repair Home Leaks

Take the time to invest in your home and make repairs to any leaking faucets, exterior air conditioning units, and water pipes. Doing so, you will not only protect your home and keep property values high, but you will help prevent the creation of a humid environment where termites (amongst other creepy crawlers) like to thrive in.

8.) Get Your Home Inspected Annually

Sometimes it can be difficult to inspect your home by yourself. If you want to make sure the job is done correctly, you may want to consider having an annual inspection scheduled by a professional. As I’m sure you’re aware, most homeowners insurance policies do not cover wooding eating insect damage.

What do you do to prevent termites from entering your home?