My house as bigger issues...

The reno is moving along. Holes are filed and the room is painted. The wall is half off room that will be a small kitchen, we are waiting to hear back from an electrical son of a friend. Hubby feels comfortable doing the pumping.
Yesterday he started to pull the siding off to put in the new garden door. Should be an easy job because years ago there was a patio door there and we had switched it out for a smaller french door. So it is still framed up inside the wall.
However when he started pulling the siding off he found ants! We think they're carpenter ants!!! He continued to get the door in place because it evening now and starting to get dark. We check it out further in the morning. I couldn't sleep half the night.
Well it's morning and our worst fears have been confirmed! Our house is three stories high in the back. Mom's inlaw suite at the top, our main level, living room, etc. and basement level with three bedrooms, rec room and a bathroom.
The garden door went in on the basement level, above it is out patio door off the living room, with our balconey(that I stained earlier this summer). Well the floor/ceiling joist between the two doors is completely rotten
Balconey will have to come off and only God knows what else.
Now the brighter side...hubby has as two brothers that are contracters, one actually built the house...he and his wife are on their way here...they're about an hour away. Don't know how this will fit into our already s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d budget.
I have to go have a cry now before they get here.
Thanks for listening.

 

Not Pretty picture

This carpenter ant thing does not sound good Fannie. The joist is not rotted, it's been eaten away. Who knows what else those little ants have been chewing on. At least you found this before they ate too much of your house.--------------I do have a remedy. In all our 17 years we've only had a few Armadillos digging holes in the yard. Now all five acres are filled with holes where those pesky Armydildos are digging for ants.............See my idea? We send you a few dozen Armadillos, we get rid of our hole problem, you get rid of your ants! Please reply soon. I don't think Armadillos like cool weather. Other than this, I'm sorry.

 

Sorry to hear about your problem, fannie. You can get rid of the ants and may be able to sister up joists or jack up and install new ones if needed. You will have to open up areas though. Your exterminator, if he is good, should be able to locate the worst areas so you can confine your openings.

 

Thats a drag fannie

I noticed them all around my garage when we bout the house, no isulation just stud walls when I bout and thankfully they hadn't got do deep damage wise, they were not at the house yet. I didn't move into the garage because of, and waisted alot of time spaying walls with no luck...YOU HAVE TO FIND THE NEST! They have a migration path you could say.... just before it gets dark they will all be in a moving path like a busy highway going to the nest, in my case from 3 different derctions but I found the nest. of all places, where the concrete garage floor met up with the ashfalt drive way, there was a perfect little clean hole they were entering. I later found out a huge Oak tree died rite on the property line, rite beside where they were going. I can't find the exact link now but the info I used came from the University Of Washington State. I got a hammer drill and made several extra holes (1/4 inch) into the driveway and filled all the holes with alot of Diazanon however it is outlawed now for off the shelf buying but there are other good products I'm sure. I drowned them with the cemical a few hours after it was real dark to make sure all/as many as possible ants got back to the nest. Next day I had in the 1000's, if not in the 10'000"s dead ants in a almost volcano looking mountain, as they were crawling out to die at the origonal hole and several smal mountains from the other holes. I repeated the prosess several times over the next few days, I was luckey and nailed them.

Sorry to hear your going to have to do magor repairs to yur home.




Here is a link with some info...

http://pestcontrolcanada.com/getting_rid_of_carpenter_ants.htm

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/science/ants.html

 

-These things are so heart wrenching. Life seems to be full of surprises............. And we probably can't get the Armydildos past customs!

 

Set 'em up with a GPS and tell them to start walkin'. Real fast!

 

Fannie, once you have resolved this horible problem do as I have been doing every single year....

OK, I still have Diazanon, I bout all I could find in 2003?? when I heard it was banned for sale but still, every year spray your hopuse perimiter where the foundation meets the wood to keep those and all other critters out.

 

----------That's what we did back in Illinois. They always outlaw the good stuff! So far we have been lucky here in Florida. Altho with all the holes with large ants in the ground, afraid to check our house now. We're hoping it will outlast us! Maybe instead of tying to get rid of the Armadillos we should bring some in for house pets.

 

If you can't get your hands on Diazinon, and in Canada it seems unlikely that you will here's a nifty little trick.

The city I live in is home to an Agricultural College and we have more tree huggers here than Haight Ashbury. They've all banded together and banned the use of any pesticides. We can't get nothin'!

I started digging into natural ways to fight pests once I couldn't get the good stuff as we had an ant problem (fortunately not Carpenter Ants, just smaller ones). Each day I'd watch a line of the little buggers walking up and down the frame of my front door and the entrance to my shop.

After some digging I found that ants, and many other insects, cannot stand Tea Tree Oil. I had some on hand so I put a line of the stuff along the bottom of my door frames and window sills. One application was all it took and I never saw them again. Unfortunately it doesn't kill them as far as I know but the sure go away in a hurry. You can pick up the raw stuff pretty cheaply at any Shoppers Drug Mart. Try not to get it on your skin as undiluted Tea Tree Oil will dissolve flesh (voice of experience here folks...I spent two weeks unable to get my shoe on after spilling it on my foot while mixing a concoction for treatment of Athletes Foot)

 

boric acid ... kills 'em dead and its safe for the chillens! ... The ants love moisture so look for water infiltratration and correct the situation or they will be back .... and dont listen to that nerd Mike Holmes (on Homes) he should be imprisioned for giving false info!

 

You guys are great! Thanks for all the suggestions...as for the armadillo's I perfer Turtles


but thanks anyway.

OK for the update we aren't so sure it's about the ants, but more about rot with ants in it!

When borther-inlaw(Melvin) arrived he climbed up and started pulling out the rotten wood. Thank God the wood behind(the floor joists) is not damaged. There are ants and we will have to deal with them but we are not so sure they caused the problem. As far as we know right now one 2x10 and 3 2x6 G&T boards will have to be replaced. So glad our house is made from G&T and not plywood.
So what we have to do is remove our patio door which is directly above the problem and hope there is no more rot around it. Then Melvin will come back with his son, maybe Wednesday, and repair the wall. He is hoping to be able to get behind the balconey supports without removing it from the house. I don't know how...but I'm not a contracter.
Anyway I've got a few pics so you can see what I'm talking about. Just a warning, it's pretty bad!

Pics 1&2 are the wall as we found it.
Pics 2&3 are after Melvin removed some of the rot and you can see the boards behind still look good as new.

 

That's funny you would say that, we kept calling Melvin(brother-inlaw Holmes

 

I love Nova Scotia's countryside. Didn't know you guys had carpenter ants. But the humidity isn't near as bad as South eastern BC or Seattle. I'm surprised that your wood took such a hit.

My 105 year old house has the same kind of construction all around the outside wall, then we added 2" Polystyrene OUTSIDE, made the inside of the exterior wall framing into 2X6 walls and added R22 Roxul (iron wool), no beasties of anykind, and out here, our common pests are ground hogs and field mice. They don't even try. Upsets their digestion. Vinyl siding all around too, like yours.

 

Oh Fannie, I'm so sorry to hear of your problems. Darned ants; you'd think they'd find enough trees to attack and leave our domiciles alone. I hope your brother in law does right by you and it turns out to be not near the problem you think it is.
Best of luck.

 

Thanks Snooter, Normy. We still aren't sure the extend of the rot, still waiting for Melvin to clear a few days for us. It's both good and bad when your family is helping.
However, an electrian was in today checked out what we need done and will get back to us hopefully tomorrow. We've been lucky weather wise so far but October(colder nights) is coming.