Thread: Woodworm / Furniture Beetle treatmet?

Hi Smee,I have just had a stickybeak(excuse the pun) at my book "Wood in Australia" with a section pertaining to woodborers and the treatment obviously is restrained to the type of infestation you have.
Without having definitive knowledge on the type of borer I can only advise the following.

A contact point would be the Queensland dept of Forrestry for some advice or perhaps a pest control service to determine the treatment required.
You may have to do some reconstruction once fumigation has been carried out and I hope its minimal for you.

As a point of interest we recently bought a property in Gympie and pest inspection services were thorough and around $180 ...peace of mind for us.

HTH and good luck
Cheers

Thanks John,
My missus took a sample of board to the pest control place and thats what they diagnosed it as, apparently a common problem here?
She said that they used pyrethuim and something (she cant remember!) usally to treat it. Just wated to do it myself because im puting a new floor down aswell (want to spray joist etc where they cant usually get)

Enjoy your new place at Gympie, John.

Smee,

Permethrin 25:75 is the most common treatment. Mixture strength 2g / lit. It is not suppose to be toxic to mammals.


Regards,

Theva

Smee

Every time I hear something like this I get a bit of the jitters. Deltamethrin (correct spelling) and permethrin are synthetic pyrethroids, while the acute and chronic toxicity of pyrethroids, is generally low to mammals, it is not nil. With all neurotoxins you can soak up a certain amount without any ill effects, however then the tiniest little bit extra and you are DEAD. No going back NO WARNING. Most of these chemicals are now only available through licence and you need to do training to get the licence, combined with all the safety equipment that you should be wearing the cost difference is probably not that great.

Take it from someone who has had more than enough to do with large quantities of Ag chemicals in the field and now works in an area where Cyanide is actually not considered that toxic. If you are not trained in chemical safety and do not have all the required equipment, please let someone who does do it.

These are my relatives!!!! :mad:

- Wood Borer

had floorboards in my new home treated for borers when I moved in. I too was not deeply happy about any possible risks. Read the stuff on the back of the can and you realise you're meant to wear suit and respirator ... I decided I'd rather pay to poison someone else to apply the stuff than do it myself. You have to be out of the house for 7 hours while they do it and so do all pets. You are also meant to have it done three years running as that is the lifecycle of the borer that is in my floorboards. According to the CSIRO using a stiff brush is preferable to spraying ( but can you imagine what it would cost to get someone to paint the entire underside of your house using a brush :eek: )

The guy turned up promptly and made a great big thing of me being sure that I would be out all day at work. Me being me ( i.e. totally untrusting ) I came home early from work and went under the house to take a look. It was as dry as a bone. There were no drip marks on the ground. Very little evidence of footprints and the underneath of the floorboards was bone dry. They say they dilute the stuff from the nearest tap. There was no puddle under the tap. This was May which is not exactly warm in Melbourne so I would have expected there to we some evidence of dampness ... especially under the house. Of course if I'd done what I was told it would have been dark when I got home and I wouldn't have been able to go under the house until the following morning. I rang up and the receptionist agreed with me that she would have expected it to be wet under the house too. Had a very embarassed manager ring me on the Monday morning who wittered on about them having used a technique they use when there is no access under the house ( you could have a party under my house ) which uses a very fine spray but as that wasn't the agreed treatment they would come and do it the way that had been agreed. Pull the other leg it has bells on. I reckon the guy waited until I was out of site and then bogged off for the day. If I was him I would have at least wetted the boards nearest the inspection door!!! Of course just because they've sprayed the boards doesn't actually mean they've sprayed them with anything other than plain water. In retrospect I should have demanded to see the containers of chemical at the start and the empties at the finish ( having of course first worked out how much they were going to use ) when they came to redo (i.e. do for the first time) the spraying.

So don't take it on trust that you are getting what you are paying for.

And if you read the caveats and getouts on the contract you will discover that they don't even guarantee that the spraying will work.