To check if an area of suspicious dirt in your home is a mud trail, take a screwdriver and scrape away a small section of the dirt. If it is an active trail the termites will immediately be visible crawling through and around the mud trial. The mud trails can be located on the exterior or the interior of the house.
If you discover that you do have termites, call a licensed termite extermination service to perform a thorough inspection and have the proper treatment applied. If your house has had prior termite problems, a bait system is recommended.
If a termite infestation is discovered there will be some degree of damage done to your home. It is recommended that you work with a licensed home repair contractor to determine the extent of the damage. The only way to fully check the extent is to open up the walls and trace the termite damage from the area of known infestation. Unfortunately termites don’t eat their way methodically from one piece of wood to another but can completely destroy one board and leave the one beside it intact. That is why it is best to do a thorough assessment of the extent of the termite infestation to ensure that all areas of damage have been identified.
In my next blog, we will discuss aspects of repairing existing termite damage.