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Termites and plants around house foundations

Posted by cestrum BrisbaneQld (My Page) on
Fri, Sep 9, 05 at 2:10

Just curious about what others are doing about not attracting (by planting up against or underneath the house) termites to the house (in Qld): eg, do you plant nothing within about a foot of the house? I've seen high-set houses with plants (usually ferns) growing in the area beneath the house: surely this is asking for trouble?


Follow-Up Postings:

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RE: Termites and plants around house foundations

If you have Steel Stumps, like we do you dont have to worry..MM.


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RE: Termites and plants around house foundations

g'day cestrum,

generally nothing and that means cement paths within a meter i always worked on a 2 meter margin. with termites you can't be too carefull when protecting your home and yes steel certainly makes their job a lot harder but they are resourceful little critters, and if there is a crack in a cement footing or in a weld they can find their way through these flaws and into you home (sorry mm you still need to be a little vigilant but yes i support all steel construction of homes in our climate).

you need to create a dry zone around the house as they like the soil moist so at best have a loose gravel type covering to keep weeds at bay fro the first meter then a cement or whatever path for the next meter then gardens.

len

mail len

lens garden page


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RE: Termites and plants around house foundations

Wow, 2 metres? That's more than I'd anticipated. Problem is that keeping the area around the house perpetually dry might help to deter termites, but the current dryness (exacerbated by the drought) has resulted in some fine cracks to the brickwork. Watering the ground around the foundations would have helped alleviate the damage to the brickwork, but might have attracted termites. Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place ...


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RE: Termites and plants around house foundations

g'day cestrum,

yes a trick i learnt form one of those real pest controllers, and also seen it many years ago mentioned on tv about home owner having paths and gardens right up close to the house. so if you have a 1 meter dry zone covered with stone mulch then a 1 meter path there is your 2 meters.

and those cracks in the brick work can be used by termites to gain access to your house, big trouble is the foundations in those active soils isn't good enough in the first place, so there will be cracks there that you can't see that termites can use.

len


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RE: Termites and plants around house foundations

Thanks, Len. What you've outlined is 'world's best practice'; whether we manage to live up to that is another matter :-) But it's good to *know* what the ideal course of action is.


 
 

 

 


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