Why One Should Stack Wood Away from House or Other Structure

[SpaceBus]

question: Im paranoid of carpenter ants. When I put on my expansion, one day I started to notice a few walking around on the floor inside and out. One time when I was cutting away the overhang coming into the expansion I noticed them in the old roof of the cabin, like 3-4.
So they are in there, somewhere. Since then, I havent seen them. I did a perimeter spray and sprayed / baited that general area where I saw them.
My neighbor on the other hand was remodeling, and when they were ripping out some wall sheeting THOUSANDS of carpenter ants poured out , and they have no idea where from. So they call and exterminator who I see on my security camera comes back about once every few months...

Im curious how people work to ensure there are no infestations inside their place. Baits, perimeter sprays, flock of pet birds?

Keep your framing/exterior walls dry, that's about the only way to stop them. I discovered several colonies when we renovated our house shortly after moving in. Before remodeling my wife said she could hear noises coming from the walls. It was not enough for me to hear through the drywall, but they were certainly there. Since getting the edges of the slab away from wet soil, decaying matter, grass, etc. I don't see scouts in or near the house. We also had some chickens free ranging for a while and I think that helped.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Ok I'll throw the kitchen sink at them. I haven't seen one in a couple of years but I also don't want to find out we have an issue when the next 3 foot snow hits.

If you see them in winter, you have a nest in the house. See them in the house in summer, maybe.

Preventative treatments usually work, but with anything, skill of the person applying makes a huge difference. And things like low decks and landscaping can make it real hard to get a good barrier applied.

 

[Isaac Carlson]

We have a porch that needs a new roof because the old one was not put on right and leaked into the walls. We will probably have to completely rebuild it, but I expect at least some ants. We had problems with ants in the past, but my wife sprayed the outside of the house and it has been good since. I guess we'll see when it comes apart this summer. I did shoot a squirrel that was living in the attic yesterday.

 

[peakbagger]

I found a carpenter ant nest in the foam used to adhere the 1st floor ceiling drywall to the ceiling joists about 8 feet in from the exterior wall. No trace of dampness or rot. They just decided it was the right place for a nest. A few years later when I had the the drywall removed on the first floor exterior wall, I could see a distinct path from a crack between two sill boards, then up the wall diagonally to opening on the top plates. I started putting a Bayer ant gel containing Fipronil. The workers grab it, haul it back to the nest and it gets fed to the queen and the workers. I did deal up the crack in the sill later on. I also found an a carpenter ant infestaton under a improperly flashed exterior door. By the time I got rid of all the rot I took out about half the sill. Once I fixed it right I have never seen an ant there.

 

[coaly]

question: Im paranoid of carpenter ants. When I put on my expansion, one day I started to notice a few walking around on the floor inside and out. One time when I was cutting away the overhang coming into the expansion I noticed them in the old roof of the cabin, like 3-4.
So they are in there, somewhere. Since then, I havent seen them. I did a perimeter spray and sprayed / baited that general area where I saw them.
My neighbor on the other hand was remodeling, and when they were ripping out some wall sheeting THOUSANDS of carpenter ants poured out , and they have no idea where from. So they call and exterminator who I see on my security camera comes back about once every few months...

Im curious how people work to ensure there are no infestations inside their place. Baits, perimeter sprays, flock of pet birds?

Sticky traps! I get the largest Catch Master pack they sell at Walmart the cheapest. Log cabin as my weekend retreat, even after treating the exterior foundation perimeter with Triazicide, and sealing every crack found, when I get ants there will be lots of them all at once. Random spiders, flies, and moths, but they were originally for ants. They are good for a monitoring device as well.

 

[SpaceBus]

I found a carpenter ant nest in the foam used to adhere the 1st floor ceiling drywall to the ceiling joists about 8 feet in from the exterior wall. No trace of dampness or rot. They just decided it was the right place for a nest. A few years later when I had the the drywall removed on the first floor exterior wall, I could see a distinct path from a crack between two sill boards, then up the wall diagonally to opening on the top plates. I started putting a Bayer ant gel containing Fipronil. The workers grab it, haul it back to the nest and it gets fed to the queen and the workers. I did deal up the crack in the sill later on. I also found an a carpenter ant infestaton under a improperly flashed exterior door. By the time I got rid of all the rot I took out about half the sill. Once I fixed it right I have never seen an ant there.

I forgot about foam, they definitely like that I have found a variety of ant species in the insulation around my slab.

 

[Wildflush]

Ok I'll throw the kitchen sink at them. I haven't seen one in a couple of years but I also don't want to find out we have an issue when the next 3 foot snow hits.

My buddy is an exterminator. Two things he uses that are very effective. He spays the foundation with Termidor and will put a white powder down, forgot the product, in areas they travel. Let’s say you see some going along under your baseboard he would apply it there. The ants will get both of these products on their legs and carry it back to the nest which is what you want to destroy. Carpenter ants as others have said prefer damp locations.

 

[Split]

View attachment 310253

That is amazing. Full diopause. I've raised a colony of carpenter ants (Camponotus novaeboracensis).

 

[GrumpyDad]

That is amazing. Full diopause. I've raised a colony of carpenter ants (Camponotus novaeboracensis).

I'd find it amazing at how quickly I would have that thing on fire.

 

[ctreitzell]

y'all realize that ants account for 10% of our earth's biomass? 10% That is a mind-numbing number

I dry green wood in place and move it to a big stack about 50' away from the building covered with plastic;
not ideal, but that's what I got. At the green wood and at the interim curing pile, I put out ant hotels and those deal with the ants. We don't really have a carpenter ant problem.

I'm in NW France and the walls of the old barns are 2 feet thick stone and "mortared" in clay. Only the roof structure and floor joists are wooden. I have built my wood store directly onto the back wall of the converted barn I live in.

There is a huge beetle problem here, it hasn't devastated us yet, but I expect the monster beetle larvae to start hammering the big oaks. They already killed a big elm in 2018 that was the cornerstone of my front field...now slowly being fed into the wood burner. I've seen the beetle grubs live in and continue to bore in dry apple, oak and elm...they're out there chomping away right now😬 in all my wood stores...and the firewood vendor delivers grubs to his customers too...he certainly does to me!

The roof on my ruin has finally gotten to the end of its life and the massive 12x12 oak tie-beams have started to fall. I've found boring grubs in one of the fallen beams, I'm sure they are in the rest. If it's wet...they are in there. Over the past two weeks I've been on a cherry picker nacelle demoing the old roof. It's unfortunate, but that's the way it has shaken out.

Here in France we have a big problem with woodworm and I'me behind on treating them. As soon as we get this roof down, I gotta get treating everything...I should prolly do it before, but it's just too dangerous.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

You may be able to apply borate salts to the Timbers to get rid of the borers. You’d have to look at the labels to see if it’d be effective.

 

[JamesGuido]

ants are one thing, mice on the other hand really tick me off.

i keep a very small load covered on a cart at my back door...
few years back, i opened the back door, started to move the cart to bring it in
when a mouse came from the pile to run INSIDE the house.
I caught it a few hours later in a live trap to displace it in a field out back.
i now get on my hands and knees to inspect the cubby holes between every piece
of wood on the rack and use a powerful leaf blower to aid in that search
before rolling the dang thing indoors.

ain't had no problems since.

 

[Wildflush]

I do keep just over a 1/3 under my deck energy wood. I have nice Woodhaven racks under there on crush stone. So far just a snake skin. About 8 feet from house.

 

[ctreitzell]

ants are one thing, mice on the other hand really tick me off.

i keep a very small load covered on a cart at my back door...
few years back, i opened the back door, started to move the cart to bring it in
when a mouse came from the pile to run INSIDE the house.
I caught it a few hours later in a live trap to displace it in a field out back.
i now get on my hands and knees to inspect the cubby holes between every piece
of wood on the rack and use a powerful leaf blower to aid in that search
before rolling the dang thing indoors.

ain't had no problems since.

I have 5 cats, two of which are voracious hunters
they don't give a monkey's about ants...nor grubs

I did have a cat (who passed a year ago, RIP) who would often engage in battles with rhinoceros beetles which we have quite a lot of here (an obvious source of the evil wood borers). The wood borers and bark beetles are our biggest threat on my property in the French countryside.

 

[NHWS]

I have the lower parts of my house sprayed for ants and termites once a month from March through September. I'll see an occasional single ant in the house during the spring, but it usually doesn't look healthy. Once a decade or so I see a line of ants heading to/from the house and some site outdoors. Spreading borax or Permethrin around both ends of the line takes care of it in a day or three. The one time (in decades) that I first noticed a colony from activity inside the house, boring a few holes in the wall and pumping in Permethrin was effective within hours. I'm surrounded by dense woods, so there's no way to eradicate them completely from the vicinity.

An ant colony inside the house still wants food from outside, so they generally aren't too hard to spot.

Wood boring beetles worry me more. No colonies or group activity to spot, and eliminating them can require rebuilding parts of walls. I look for beetle signs when I split rounds, but they might not be visible along the fresh cuts.

I keep about a day's supply of firewood inside the house in Rubbermaid-style containers. There's a small store (about 1/3 cord) around 20 to 30 feet from the house, and the main store around 150 feet away. I've seen a handful of ants in the indoor containers over the past few months, but an occasional isolated worker/soldier/scout ant is not very alarming.

 

[NHWS]

Treating the wood stacks with borax or Permethrin is tempting. How toxic are the residues when burned?

 

[NHWS]

ants are one thing, mice on the other hand really tick me off.

Mice are another thing that are unavoidable here in the woods. I've always got traps set, and I find one full every few weeks. I'm allergic to cats, so I can't keep them in the house, and outdoor cats rarely avoid the bobcats and coyotes for long.

The twice a year or so that I find a bat flying around in the house is also disturbing. Nothing against bats in general, but they are not good house guests.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

What product are you spraying once a month? Most products are microencapsulated and last 2+.

Most labels specifically warn against spraying wood you intend to burn. It can't be good for you.

 

[Wood1Dennis]

I store my year's supply, about 4 cord in the basement. I do spray it with Ortho Home Defense just to kill off anything that might be in there. I'm burning it in a furnace that is vented outside so zero worries about burning the wood I sprayed.

 

[NHWS]

What product are you spraying once a month? Most products are microencapsulated and last 2+.

I prefer to have as little contact with pesticides as I can, so I hire a pest control company to apply it. They change pesticides fairly often. The invoice always shows how much and what they applied. I monitored it for the first 5 years or so, but stopped around 15 or 20 years ago. Not sure what they are using these days.

 

[NHWS]

Most labels specifically warn against spraying wood you intend to burn. It can't be good for you.

I didn't notice any such warning on the Permethrin bottle, but perhaps I overlooked it. The borax I use is in a 5 lb commercial laundry can, and doesn't mention the idea of using it as a pesticide.

I assume that applying almost any chemical to wood that is going to be burned in the house is a bad idea unless I have strong evidence to the contrary. Both borax and Permethrin were mentioned earlier in this thread. I was wondering if anyone had such evidence.

I recently had to discard most of a small store of rounds when I found beetle signs in too many of them, so the idea of some kind of preventative treatment seemed worth asking about. I'm very interested in what others here are doing to avoid insect problems in their homes.

 

[Eman85]

I burn the wood, takes care of insects. I don't store large quantities near my house or other structures. I do keep a rack on my concrete porch and I'm sure there are some bugs in some of the wood but they are pretty dormant in the winter and that's the only time I keep wood there. My large pile I'm burning this year has plenty of fine powdered sawdust in it so I know the bugs have been eating over the years that wood has been cut and split.

I've had a house with powder post beetles in the floor joists and it wasn't from firewood as they were there before I put a stove in.

 

[Max W]

This has turned up in some pieces in the batch of wood I have stacked on our enclosed porch. I have never seen this before. There is so much very fine dust in affected pieces it’s a pain. I am guessing, hoping that is the only pain. The wood has been in my shed for two years. I plan to refill my porch rack tomorrow and will be on the lookout for any more sign left by the larve. What insect might this be?

 

[NHWS]

Agree that burning the wood eliminates the problem. For the few splits I kept from the infested store, I'm leaving them outside until I'm ready to reload. That involves stairs, which my knees don't like much, and means more trips outside into cold rain, which the rest of me doesn't like much. Doable, but not preferable.

Temps have been pretty warm this winter. I suspect that it takes time for them to mature, as well as warmer temps, so they are less likely to be a problem in December and January, but I don't know much about the life cycles of the wood borers.

I'd rather make fewer, larger trips to the near stack and keep a day's worth in the house. The shoulder heating season here sometimes extends through June, and I'm concerned about wood borers in that one day supply. I think the risk is not very high, but if one takes a low risk often enough eventually one loses. The consequences of a wood borer infestation in the house can be severe.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

I didn't notice any such warning on the Permethrin bottle, but perhaps I overlooked it. The borax I use is in a 5 lb commercial laundry can, and doesn't mention the idea of using it as a pesticide.

I assume that applying almost any chemical to wood that is going to be burned in the house is a bad idea unless I have strong evidence to the contrary. Both borax and Permethrin were mentioned earlier in this thread. I was wondering if anyone had such evidence.

I recently had to discard most of a small store of rounds when I found beetle signs in too many of them, so the idea of some kind of preventative treatment seemed worth asking about. I'm very interested in what others here are doing to avoid insect problems in their homes.

I hate reading labels. I have to do it for the stuff we apply, but I don’t want to put other products in my brain, lol. So I took the easy way out.