Wood borer

FACTS ABOUT WOOD BORERS

Adult beetles lay their eggs in cracks in wood. Outdoors this isn’t much of a problem, but if they lay your eggs inside your property they might infest floorboards, furniture, wooden beams and any other wooden objects.

Larvae burrow deep into the wood where they feed – and in the process make a maze of tunnels over several years. If you don’t have specialist wood borer control the larvae can seriously weaken the timbers in a building. If left untreated, this may lead to structural failure of timbers.

You may not realise that you have a wood borer problem until the resulting damage becomes visible, so early identification is key before they cause more harm.

SIGNS OF A WOOD BORER INFESTATION

• Fresh exit holes in timber – round or oval shaped with sharp edges, the holes will appear clean and fresh.

• Tunnels in the wood – also known as ‘galleries’ which are often hard to see.

• Bore dust – (also known as frass) caused by emerging adult beetles, and are usually visible below the infested timber.

• Weak and damaged floorboards – in extreme cases, a foot or chair leg going through the floor can indicate a more serious problem.

• Crumbling wood – around corners or edges to roof joists or floorboards.

• Dead beetles – usually found near the infested timber or around nearby windowsills.

• Adult beetles – emerge from timbers between May and October.

• Eggs – these vary in size depending on the beetle, but all are difficult to spot with the naked eye.

• Wood Borer larvae – usually a creamy-white colour and curved in shape.

TREATMENT FOR WOOD BORERS

After one of our experienced surveyors has carried out a thorough inspection, assessing the extent of any problem, the type of Wood Borer involved and determined if the infestation is active, an appropriate Wood Borer treatment will be recommended.

Fumigation will be performed on wooden furniture and any other wooden items on our premises, while containers and silos will be fumigated on your property. Please note that we do not treat any buildings or structures for wood borer.

Water based treatment – Designed to minimise the exposure of people, pets and the environment to chemicals used within our treatments. To assist with long-term protection the solution will remain within the layers of the timber, cracks, crevices and flight holes to prevent any future infestations becoming established. Our wood borer treatments also help in treating fungal decay.

Fumigation – ProFume is a specialist fumigation treatment. It is a gas fumigant with the active ingredient Sulfuryl Fluoride. This fumigation process effectively eliminates all life stages of wood boring insect infestations.

With a lifecycle of at least 3 to 4 years there may still be some beetles that reach adulthood and emerge from the timber after treatment. This is known as ‘post treatment emergence’. Any eggs that these ‘post treatment emergence’ beetles leave in cracks, crevices or old flight holes of the treated timbers will not survive, which means that the Wood Borer lifecycle will have been broken.