Hyattsville Termite Control

Walk down Farragut, Gallatin, or Hamilton Street and count the front porches. Nearly every house built from the 1880s through the 1920s has one: a wood floor on joists, set on brick piers, with wood steps down to the walk and lattice skirting around the open space underneath. The Queen Anne and Victorian houses, the foursquares, the bungalows, and the Sears kit houses in the district all follow some version of it. The porch is the part of the house closest to the ground, the part that gets rained on, and the part nobody crawls under.

That is why porches are one of the first places we look. Lattice and step stringers that touch the soil give termites a direct bridge into the wood. Leaves and debris pile up under the deck and hold moisture against the joists. Where the porch meets the main house, the ledger board ties the porch framing straight into the house framing. Termites that get into the porch can work along it into the house.

Old Masonry Hides the Evidence

Under the main house, the older foundations are brick or fieldstone. After a century of settling, the mortar joints open up and the inside of the wall has gaps and voids. Termites can travel through those gaps without ever building a tube on the surface. When they do build mud tubes, the rough face of a stone wall makes them easy to miss. The sill plate sitting on top of that masonry is often original wood, and any soil treatment from decades ago has long since worn out. Post-war homes in Queens Chapel Manor, Castle Manor, and University Hills have their own weak spots. Block foundations with hollow cores, brick stoops and patios poured against the house, and basements finished in the 1970s all cover up the walls we most need to see.

New Townhomes Are Not Off the Hook

The newer rowhomes in the Arts District and around Hyattsville Crossing and West Hyattsville Metro sit on concrete slabs. Termites can still come up through expansion joints, plumbing gaps, and the edge of the slab, and in a row of attached homes they do not stop at the property line. Builder pretreatments also wear out over time. If you are the first owner of a newer townhome, it is worth knowing when your builder's termite coverage ends.

Ask most Hyattsville homeowners how they found termites and the answer is the same: a little heap of wings. That happens in spring, from about March into May. Termite swarmers come out on a warm afternoon after rain, through a crack in the foundation, a cellar window, or the gap under a porch floor. They drop their wings within minutes. You may find the wings on the porch boards, on a windowsill, or on the basement floor near the furnace. Swarmers inside the house mean a colony is nearby and has probably been there for years.

Outside of spring you have to look harder. Check for:

• Mud tubes on cellar walls, porch piers, or the concrete around a basement window
• Porch steps, stringers, or lattice that feel soft or crumble at the soil line
• Soft or hollow-sounding spots on the sill plate or the bottom of the basement stairs
• Rippled or bubbled paint on baseboards and window trim
• Tunnels in an old stump, a landscape timber, or firewood stacked against the house
• Mulch built up above the brick or siding line, especially near downspouts

Our guide to signs of termites in your yard covers the outdoor clues in more detail. If you find any of these, do not tear into the wood or spray it. Call us first so we can see the activity as it is.