Subterranean vs Drywood Termites in San Jacinto

San Jacinto homes get two very different termites, and telling them apart is the whole game, because they are found and treated in completely different ways. Here is how to read which one you have before you call.

The two termites San Jacinto has

Subterranean termites nest in the ground and need soil moisture. In the San Jacinto Valley they follow the water: a leaking hose bib, an irrigation line, a flower bed against the slab, a lawn watered through a 100-degree summer. They build pencil-width mud tubes up the foundation and into the framing, and on a slab home those tubes often run behind the stucco where nobody looks. They are the most common structural termite on the valley floor.

Drywood termites are the other kind. They fly in, land on bare or gapped wood, and set up a colony inside the wood with no soil contact at all, in the attic, the fascia, the eaves, a wood fence, or a stack of firewood. The tell is not a mud tube but small piles of hard six-sided pellets, like coarse sand, under the infested wood. Older San Jacinto and Hemet homes and anything with exposed rafters or trim are the usual drywood targets.

How to tell them apart

Look at what they leave behind. Mud tubes on the foundation, a pier, or the garage slab edge mean subterranean termites and soil contact. Small piles of hard tan pellets under eaves, window sills, or attic wood mean drywood termites living inside the wood. A spring or summer swarm of winged termites, or shed wings on a windowsill, can come from either, and warm inland weather after irrigation or a rare rain is when both tend to swarm.

The difference is not academic, because it decides the treatment. Guessing wrong wastes money and leaves the colony working. That is why an experienced local exterminator confirms the species with an inspection before quoting, rather than selling one blanket treatment for whatever might be there.

Why the treatment is different

Subterranean termites are handled from the soil. The fix is either a continuous liquid termiticide zone in the ground around the foundation or an in-ground bait system the colony shares and carries back underground, paired with correcting the moisture and wood-to-soil contact that drew them, the dripping hose bib, the mulch and soil against the stucco, the irrigation spraying the slab.

Drywood termites live in the wood, so they are treated in the wood: localized treatment of the infested members for a small, contained infestation, or whole-structure fumigation for one that has spread through an attic. In this dry inland climate the moisture corrections matter for the subterranean side and the wood sealing and exclusion matter for the drywood side, which is why the inspection comes first.

References

• UC IPM, termite management
• California Dept. of Pesticide Regulation

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