Never have termites!!!

I'm so annoyed that I decided to blog! hahah =)

For those of you who live in humid areas that don't get too hot (e.g., the South Bay, Florida, Hawaii, Texas) who are considering buying a home, please take this into serious consideration...beware of termites!!! Apparently, in dry, hot areas, like Palm Springs, termites cannot survive because they don't have any mechanism in their tiny little wood-boring/tunneling/eating bodies to sweat so they just explode! Yeah, you learn something new every day and that's the new bit of information I learned on May 21st when I had my termite inspection.

Well, it all started about 3 months ago when I discovered (when the alarm company sent a guy out to check out all the connections on all my doors and he asked me to open the door in my bedroom to the balcony...thank God he did because otherwise, I'd be none the wiser at this moment!), that there was a pile of, um, let me call it "stuff," in the corner. I immediately thought to myself, "Oh, crap...that's not good."

So, I scheduled a termite inspection for Saturday, April 30th, completely forgetting that I had to work because of finals. So I had to reschedule it and the next available Saturday was May 21st.

I had given my neighbors a heads up that it looked like a good possibility that I have termites. This was, of course, unwelcome news for the neighbors in the middle unit since they had just put their house on the market! But, we were all hoping that it was silverfish causing the pile of stuff, and not termites.

Well, unfortunately, the termite inspector did not have good news for me. It turns out that my neighbor's place only had external termite stuff, but my house? I showed him the pile of stuff in the corner of my bedroom and he said, "Yeah, that's termites. I'll go into your attic and see how it is there. If there's nothing, then we can do some local treatment." He also laid out the other 2 options. That was when I learned that termites don't sweat in heat--they just explode. And from that fact, new technology was developed about 10 years ago as an alternate to tenting. They use microwaves to generate heat in a particular area of a building that has termites and they just make all those buggers explode! Yuck! Bug guts everywhere? No thank you! Even if they're in my walls! hahaha =)

And, of course, the other alternative is to tent. In terms of the cost, the heat method is more expensive and only covers limited areas. Because a big ol' tent actually serves as advertising (the neighbors see a tent go up and they think to themselves, "Oh, crap, I need to check to see whether or not I have termites" and there ya go...instant business!), the cost for tenting ends up being lower.

Well, the inspector got his ladder and went into my attic and I heard his voice from up above say, "Oh boy, Jane" and I instantly knew it was not good. He said that they were all along the inside of the attic and that was just what he could see! He said that they could be all inside the walls but because he couldn't get in there to see what was going on, the only solution would be to tent.

We didn't know what the situation down at the other end unit was (there are 3 units in my building), but, my situation pretty much was the trump card. It wouldn't matter if the gal on the end didn't have any termites. Because mine needed to be tented, the entire building would have to be tented.

I went and broke the news to my neighbors in the middle who were selling their place.

A few days later, I spoke to the gal on the end and she said that the inspector didn't even bother going into her attic because she had termite wings all over the place! Eeek!

We figured out when this would best need to happen. Donna and Roman, for obvious reasons, would prefer to not have to be out of their house for 3 days/2 nights only to come back to move a few weeks later. So, we scheduled the tenting for Thursday, June 23rd. We'll have to be out of our houses on Thursday and Friday and we'd be allowed to come back in on Saturday.

But, that's not all!!! In addition to being displaced for 2 nights, we have to bag (actually, double bag with these things called Nylofume bags) all the food in the house that isn't in an unopened can or plastic bottle or bottle. And that includes all the food in the refrigerator and freezer!!!! (They suggest removing shelves to make more space. Yay.) You have to bag up all your medicine as well!

So, I decided that since I'm busy every night next week leading up to needing to be out of the house, I need to start on this process tonight (Friday night). Plus, if I don't have enough Nylofume bags, I need enough time to get more so that I can then bag up everything else!

Can I just say how much of an incredible pain this entire process is?!?!?! This is worse than moving! At least with moving, you put everything in a box and you move it out and when you take the stuff out of the box again, it's going into a different place!! I'm having to bag everything up only to return everything back to where it was originally!

The good part is that I am throwing away a lot of stuff that's been leftover from previous roommates. And given that I moved in on December 18, 2000, there's a lot of stuff! We have about 10 bottles of olive oil! So, this is forcing me to go through everything and toss whatever needs to be tossed.

So not only is this costly (pay the fumigation company, and if need be, stay in a hotel but I'm lucky that I don't have to), but it's also time consuming! I'm having to spend time bagging up all my food and then I'm also going to have to go through and un-bag everything! Luckily for me (dripping sarcasm), I'm gone all next weekend so that means that I won't get around to it until the weekend after that, and that's 4th of July weekend! As if the very thing I want to do on a holiday weekend is un-bag everything and return everything to its rightful place.

Oh, no, I'm not bitter at all about this whole experience. hahahahah =)

Well, here's something else I'm definitely coming away with through this experience--I'm going to schedule a termite inspection every year so that I can head this off at the pass in the future!!!

The thing is that there is no way to prevent the termites from coming back!! They swarm every Fall and it's just your luck if they don't tunnel into your house!

This is something I definitely had not considered when I bought my house! The previous owners had to take care of some termite problems as part of our escrow agreement and I didn't give termites another thought. Big mistake.

Well, now I know. You live and learn, right?

Although, the one good thing about this whole thing is that after the tent comes off and we can re-enter the house, every single little creepy crawly critter that was in the house will be good and dead! =) No more spiders, ants, and silverfish!!! Yay! We'll be bug-free until some other ones decide to come and take up residence.

Well, I'm going to go back to bagging now. =)