Termites are the most expensive pest problem a Sri Lankan household is likely to meet, and the least visible. A colony works inside timber and behind plaster, so the damage is usually months old by the time anything looks wrong. The good news is that the early signs are easy to recognise once you know what you are looking at.
The six signs, in the order you are likely to see them
- Mud tubes. Pencil-width tunnels of soil and saliva running up a wall, a pillar or the outside of a foundation. They are how subterranean termites travel without drying out, and they are the single most reliable sign.
- Discarded wings. After the first heavy rains, winged termites swarm, land, and shed their wings in small piles, often on a windowsill or near a light.
- Timber that sounds hollow. Tap a skirting board or a door frame with a knuckle. A dull, papery sound means the inside has gone.
- Paint that bubbles or ripples for no reason, particularly low on a wall. Termites raise the surface as they work behind it.
- Doors and windows that suddenly stick. Not the usual monsoon swelling, this is frame distortion as the timber weakens.
- Fine soil or frass at the base of a wall, appearing again a day after you sweep it up.
Which one matters most
Mud tubes. Everything else on that list tells you there is a problem somewhere; a mud tube tells you where. It marks the route between the colony in the soil and the timber it is feeding on, which is the information any treatment is built around. If you find one, resist the urge to break it open and scrape it away, an intact tube is worth more to whoever treats the property than a tidy wall.
Why the monsoon changes things
Swarming is triggered by rain and humidity, so the weeks after the first serious downpour are when most people notice termites for the first time. It is also when a small problem becomes several: a swarm is a colony reproducing, and the pairs that survive start new colonies nearby. A property treated before the rains is a very different job from the same property treated after them.
What we would need to know
If you think you have termites, the useful details are: where you saw the sign, what the building sits on, whether the affected timber touches soil or masonry, and whether there has been a leak or damp patch near it. Termites follow moisture, and a plumbing problem behind a wall is a surprisingly common root cause. Send us those and we will tell you what it looks like and put a quote in writing before anything is applied.