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Welcome to our blog Affordable rentals
and this post, these wooden houses need care
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These wooden houses need care
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Termite nests in the bush of north Queensland, they are strange little creature the white ants, they seem to work always from the inside, except for the worker that sometimes goes out to deposit the soil, and so the white ant mount grows
These wooden houses need care
Dear readers, let
us continue to talk about these wooden houses in this post, just to see what
these houses need in order to be kept well; it is just as most of us thought,
these wooden houses need some maintenance and care
For those people
that have not own or lived in timber houses before, they should ask questions
about them before they get involved in owning one of these houses; perhaps the
first question that would come to their mind is: are these houses safe to live
in and how long these houses can last? And then, what sort of maintenance they
require? You see, they have a right to know that, so let me try to explain this
timber housing situation.
Timber houses need
perhaps more maintenance that masonry houses; because first of all you need to
paint them for the timber to last longer, otherwise the timber on the outside
walls will slowly rot away, but then, there are also some advantages because,
you see if you want to change something it can be done easily a lot easier and
cheaper than if you have a masonry house, therefore, it is a lot cheaper also
to do some alterations, so it can work well after all.
Having said that we
need also to say that these wooden houses have some problems of their own,
apart that they need to be painted for the external timber to last longer, they
also have some vermin enemies everywhere in the houses, because the timber is
more vermin friendly than masonry and bricks and cement, but the normal vermin
are not a big problem for the house structure itself.
The greatest enemy
of these wooden houses are the termites, or white ants as some of us calls
them; The white ants can really destroy entire buildings by eating the wood
from the inside, a lot of times people don’t even know that the white ants are
there eating their houses away while they are living in them; you see, unless
you know what you are looking for, it is hard to see any sign of them from the
outside. So one day suddenly one can find out by toughing or putting some
pressure on a spot where the white ants have eaten the wood from inside, and
here one can have a great shock to see this happen, as everything starts
collapsing inward and where there was a wall now there is a big hole.
Therefore, it would
be worthwhile to learn how to recognize the signs if there are white ants; and
definitely call an expert to check the building if you are going to buy it.
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How to defend our homes from these pests
The white ant
problem
How to defend our
homes from these pests
These is how the white ants (termite) look like, they seem so soft and vulnerable that at first sight one would think that they cannot do any damage to anything, that is until one can see what they can do to wooden structures.
All timber posts under a house should have ants capping to insure that crawling insect and the white ants cannot come in that way
All timber posts under a house should have ants capping to insure that crawling insect and the white ants cannot come in that way
There are a few
things that we can do to prevent this pest destroying our homes; the first
thing that one has to do is to check that there is a barrier that stops the
white ants to enter your building, for instance if your house is a high-set
house on stumps, check that at the top of the stumps there is a metallic ant
capping; this metallic ant capping is usually a large galvanized round dish or
square of metal and it is bent down at the edges so that any crawling insect
will find it difficult to enter your house that way; we hope you can see the
picture? The ant capping prevents also the white ants to enter through the
stump itself, if the stump has been infested with white ants, because when they
reach the top of the stump they cannot eat through the metal capping and so
they are stopped entering that way, of course there are a lot of different
buildings and a lot of different ways to set a barrier; but sometimes the white
ants find their way around.
Now there are ways
that one should be looking for if there are white ants; here the first thing
that we have to keep in mind is that white ants eat everything from inside and
they don’t like to be exposed outside for long, so, the first thing one can do
is to tap on anything that is made of wood; if the wood sounds hollow then the
white ants might have eaten the inside, so a complete check is needed to see
what is the cause; another way to look for white ants signs is that if they are
forced to go outside to move from one place to another, they will construct a
tunnel, so that they can go up and down without being seen, so one has to look
for these signs anywhere under the building: Now some expert has told me that what
happens here is that the white ants need moisture, so they have to travel to
the ground to get the moisture and then they go up again their tunnel to eat
the timber; now if the building is solid and there is no other way for the ants
to go up they will construct their tunnel from the ground up, so we should be
looking for signs to see if there are ants tunnel constructed, and if there are
tunnels, it means that there are white ants also, therefore you need a pest
control expert to poison these pests, and you need him fast.
Some natural
enemies of the white ants
White ants have
very few enemies because they live and hide inside the timber, but there are
some natural enemies of course in their natural habitat, a couple of which are
pictured here. As I said before, one needs to learn the signs how to spot the
white ants presence, and do something if you find that they are there,
otherwise they could eat your house away pretty quickly.
Here under we have
pasted two links about termites that other Huber’s have written for you to
check them out.
Good luck to all
the houses owner!
Dear readers, our
intention here is that we are going to write several hubs and talk about
houses, how to own them, how to maintain them and how to build them, because
that is what I have done during my life; so, even though in our next hub will
be talking about: is Australia the land of opportunities, we will be talking
about the opportunities that I had in the house building industry. So, see you soon in our next hub.
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Affordable Rentals Australia wooden houses
IS TO BE CONTINUED;
Next time with, Australia land of opportunity
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Yola.com
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