🔗 Save $6,000 A Year with My Complete Amish Home-Saving Method I teach: https://eliasyoder.com
Think termites are impossible to get rid of? Think again. In this video, you'll discover practical and effective ways to eliminate a termite infestation before it causes costly damage to your home. From identifying the early warning signs to using proven treatment methods and prevention tips, this guide covers everything you need to protect your property.
Whether you're dealing with subterranean termites, drywood termites, or simply want to prevent an infestation, these expert-backed techniques can help you take control. Learn which methods actually work, which common mistakes to avoid, and how to keep termites from coming back.
If you care about keeping your home safe and saving thousands on repairs, this video is for you.
👍 If you found this video helpful, please LIKE, SUBSCRIBE, and turn on notifications for more home maintenance, pest control, and DIY tips every week!
#Termites #PestControl #TermiteTreatment #HomeMaintenance #DIYHome #HomeRepair #TermiteInfestation #HomeProtection #HouseholdTips #Gardening
Think termites are impossible to get rid of? Think again. In this video, you'll discover practical and effective ways to eliminate a termite infestation before it causes costly damage to your home. From identifying the early warning signs to using proven treatment methods and prevention tips, this guide covers everything you need to protect your property.
Whether you're dealing with subterranean termites, drywood termites, or simply want to prevent an infestation, these expert-backed techniques can help you take control. Learn which methods actually work, which common mistakes to avoid, and how to keep termites from coming back.
If you care about keeping your home safe and saving thousands on repairs, this video is for you.
👍 If you found this video helpful, please LIKE, SUBSCRIBE, and turn on notifications for more home maintenance, pest control, and DIY tips every week!
#Termites #PestControl #TermiteTreatment #HomeMaintenance #DIYHome #HomeRepair #TermiteInfestation #HomeProtection #HouseholdTips #Gardening
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00There is a kind of trouble in a house that you never see coming, that does its work in
00:05the dark and the quiet, behind the wall and under the floor, for months and even years
00:11before you know it is there, and that is the termite.
00:15It does not buzz or bite or leave droppings on the counter where you would notice.
00:20It eats the very wood your house is built of, silently, from the inside, and by the
00:26time a floor gives soft underfoot or a door frame crumbles at a touch, it has already
00:32done its damage.
00:33Now I will be plain with you from the very start, plainer than most.
00:38There is no cheap powder and no kitchen trick that kills a colony of these once they are
00:44truly in your house.
00:45But there is a great deal the old builders knew about keeping them out in the first place,
00:50and catching them early if they come, and that old wisdom is worth more than any powder.
00:56for it is what actually protects a home.
00:59Let me give it to you.
01:00Here is the thing to understand, and it is the whole key to everything after.
01:05The termite that eats a house does not live in the house.
01:08It lives in the ground, down in the soil, and it comes up into the wood to feed and carries
01:14it back down.
01:15And it needs three things to trouble you.
01:18It needs wood to eat, it needs damp, for it cannot abide dryness and must have moisture.
01:24And it needs a way to get from the soil to the wood without crossing open dry air, which
01:29would kill it.
01:30Take away any one of those three and you have beaten it before it starts.
01:34You cannot easily take away the wood, for your house is made of it.
01:38But the damp and the pathway you can take away.
01:41And that is the whole of keeping a house safe.
01:45Every single thing I am about to tell you does one of those two.
01:48It dries the house out, or it breaks the path from the soil to the wood.
01:53Quick word before we go further.
01:55My name is Esther Yoder, and the old household ways handed down to me, the kind I am sharing
02:01today and a great many more besides, are far more than I could ever fit into one video.
02:07I have gathered the whole of them into a book, and you will find it at EliasYoder.com.
02:12If today's tips serve you, that is where the rest of what my mother and grandmother
02:17taught me lives, all in the one place.
02:21Now to the house.
02:22The old builders among my people knew this in their bones, and it shaped the way they
02:27built and kept a house.
02:29My grandfather would say that you keep a house sound the same way you keep a body sound,
02:34by keeping it dry and letting it breathe, and that damp is the mother of every rot and
02:39every pest that ever troubled a timber.
02:42He would no more have let a wood pile lean against the house wall than he would have
02:46let water stand in the cellar, for he understood, without ever needing the long words for it,
02:52that termites and rot alike follow the wet and cross on whatever bridge you leave them.
02:58So the old wisdom is not a cure you apply after.
03:01It is a way of keeping a house that never gives the trouble a place to start.
03:06Let me give it to you piece by piece.
03:08The first and the oldest rule, and the most important of all, is this.
03:13Keep the wood off the ground.
03:15No wood that you can help should ever touch the bare soil, for the ground is where the
03:20termites live, and the point where wood meets soil is the very bridge they cross to get into it.
03:25So walk your whole place and look for every spot where wood meets earth.
03:30The firewood stacked against the house or sitting on the ground.
03:34Get it up off the earth on a rack or a row of stones, and move the whole pile well
03:39away from the house.
03:40For a wood pile against the wall is a termite's front door, feeding them right up to your foundation.
03:46The fence posts, the porch steps, the deck posts, the scrap lumber left lying by the shed, the old stump
03:53by the foundation.
03:54Every bit of wood on the bare ground is an invitation.
03:57And a stump or buried scrap right by the house is the worst of all.
04:01Get the wood up off the soil, and haul the dead wood and the old stumps well away, and you
04:07have taken away the very bridge the termites need.
04:10The second rule is to keep the soil itself, and the mulch, back from the wood of your house.
04:16Over the years, the ground gets built up against a house, the soil piled up, the flower beds banked high
04:24against the siding,
04:25the mulch heaped up thick right against the wall.
04:28And every one of those puts damp earth in direct touch with your wood, and gives the termites a covered,
04:35hidden way straight up into it.
04:38So pull the soil down away from your siding, so there is a good gap of foundation showing between the
04:45earth and the wood, a hand's width and more.
04:49And keep the mulch pulled back from the walls, for mulch is damp and woody, and termites love it.
04:56And heaped against the house, it is a nest right at the door.
05:00A little bare ground between the earth and the wood of your house, kept clear, is a wall the termites
05:07do not like to cross.
05:08The third rule, and it is as important as the first, is to fix the damp.
05:14For damp is the thing that draws them above all else.
05:19Termites follow moisture the way a thirsty man follows water, and a dry house is a house they pass by.
05:26So go after every source of wet, the gutter that overflows and pours water down the wall.
05:33Mend it, and see that the downspouts carry the water well away from the foundation, not pooling against it.
05:40The ground that slopes toward the house so the rain runs to the wall instead of away.
05:46Build it up so the water sheds away from the house.
05:49The dripping tap, the leaking pipe under the sink or in the wall, the damp that gathers in the crawl
05:56space under the floor.
05:57Find them and mend them, for every one of them is a wet place that calls the termites in and
06:04lets them thrive.
06:05Dry out your house, inside and out and underneath, and you starve the termite of the one thing it cannot
06:12live without.
06:12And the fourth, close kin to the third, is to keep the air moving under the house and around the
06:19wood.
06:19For moving air keeps wood dry, and dry wood is safe wood.
06:24If your house has a crawl space beneath it, see that its vents are open and clear,
06:29and not blocked up with leaves or boxes or shrubbery, so the air runs through and dries the timbers underneath.
06:36Cut back the bushes and vines that grow up thick against the house,
06:40and hold the damp against the wall and shut out the drying sun.
06:44A house that can breathe stays dry, and dry wood does not rot and does not feed a termite.
06:51Now here is where the borax comes in, for I know some of you came hoping to hear of it,
06:56and it does have a real and honest use here, only not the one the wild talk claims.
07:02Borax will not kill a colony in the ground or clear an infestation from puffing it about the outside.
07:09Do not believe that, for it is your house at stake.
07:12But borax, the plain white powder, is a true and old treatment for bare wood,
07:17for it soaks into raw timber and makes that wood poison to the insects that would eat it and slow
07:24to rot.
07:24So where you have bare, untreated wood that you want to protect, the fence posts before you set them,
07:31the bare boards of a barn or a shed, the raw timbers in a crawl space,
07:36you can treat that wood with a strong borax solution, brushing or spraying it well into the raw wood so
07:42it soaks in,
07:43and it will help guard that particular wood against the termites and the rot both.
07:48That is borax's real place. Not a cure sprinkled round the yard, but a treatment brushed into bare wood to
07:55protect it.
07:56Used so, it is a genuine old help.
08:00Now, for all your good keeping, you must know how to read the early signs,
08:04for the sooner you catch a termite, the less it costs you. So learn to look.
08:10The surest sign is the mud tube. Because the termite cannot cross open dry air,
08:15it builds itself little covered tunnels of mud, thin brown lines about the width of a pencil,
08:22running up the outside of your foundation from the soil toward the wood.
08:26Walk round your foundation now and then and look for those mud tubes,
08:30for they are the termite's road and they give it away.
08:33Another sign is wood that sounds hollow. Tap along your baseboards and your window sills,
08:39and your porch posts with the handle of a screwdriver. And where the wood is being eaten from within,
08:46it will sound hollow and papery instead of solid, and may even crumble.
08:51And a third sign comes in the spring, when the termites swarm to breed and shed their wings.
08:57Little piles of small, clear, discarded wings on a window sill or a floor near a wall,
09:02all of a size, are a sure sign they are there and breeding.
09:08Walk your house a few times a year and look for these three things,
09:12and you will catch the trouble while it is small.
09:15And now the honest word I owe you above all, the one the wild videos will never tell you,
09:22because there is no cure to sell in it. If you do find the signs,
09:26if you find the mud tubes or the hollow wood or the shed wings,
09:30and know the termites are truly in your house,
09:34that is the time to bring in someone who knows the work,
09:37and not to trust your home to a powder or a home remedy.
09:41I say this plainly because I care more for your house than for a tidy promise.
09:47A termite colony in the structure of a home is beyond what any of us can put right with what
09:53is in the pantry.
09:54And a house is the greatest thing most families own,
09:58worth far more than the cost of having it seen to properly.
10:02There is no shame in it and no failure.
10:05It is simply knowing which trouble is yours to mend and which is not.
10:09The keeping out is yours to do, all of it, for pennies.
10:14The clearing out, once they are truly in, wants a professional, and that is the truth.
10:20Now think a moment about why the loud voices will tell you
10:24a dollar of powder kills every termite forever,
10:27when it is your very house they are gambling with.
10:30It is worse than a plot, for no one had to arrange it,
10:34and here it cuts the other way from usual.
10:37It is not that a cheap true cure was hidden from you,
10:41but that a cheap false one is shouted at you,
10:44because there is attention and money in a grand simple promise,
10:48and none in the plain truth that you keep termites out by keeping your house dry
10:53and your wood off the ground, and pay a professional when they are truly in.
10:58The real old wisdom, the keeping and the watching, is quiet and unsellable,
11:04so it stopped being handed down, while the loud false cure spreads far and wide.
11:10My grandfather kept a house sound for a lifetime, with dry timbers and wood up off the ground,
11:17and he would have had no patience at all for a powder that promised to do his careful keeping for
11:23him.
11:24The mending of it is your own two hands and a few afternoons.
11:28You get every bit of wood up off the ground and the wood pile away from the house.
11:33You pull the soil and the mulch back from the siding.
11:37You fix every leak and drip, and see the watersheds away from the foundation.
11:42You keep the air moving under the house, and you treat your bare wood with borax where you can.
11:49And you walk your foundation a few times a year, looking for the mud tubes and tapping for the hollow
11:55wood.
11:56And you keep your house sound and dry and unappealing to the termite,
12:01for the cost of almost nothing.
12:03And you catch any trouble while it is small.
12:06That is how it comes home.
12:08One wood pile moved, one leak mended at a time.
12:12The keeping of your own house back in your own hands.
12:16And the wisdom to know the one trouble that wants more than your hands can give.
12:21So here is what I would ask of you.
12:23This week, walk all the way round your house, and look for the wood touching the ground,
12:29and the mulch heaped against the wall, and the gutter running down the siding.
12:33And set those right.
12:35And while you are there, look for any mud tubes on the foundation.
12:39And then come back and tell me in the comments what you found.
12:43For I am always glad to hear a house set right before the trouble comes.
12:47And tell me too, while you are there, your county and the age of your house.
12:52For the termite is a far worse plague in the warm damp south than in the cold north.
12:57And the old houses have their own ways of standing that matter here.
13:02And I learn from every one of you how it goes where you live.
13:06And if your own family had a way of keeping a house sound against the pests and the rot that
13:12I have not named,
13:13tell me that most of all.
13:15For that is how this goes.
13:16We share what we were given.
13:18I read every comment and I learn from you the way the old folk learned from one another across the
13:25fence line.
13:26One house and one season at a time.
13:30Next time I will show you the old ways of keeping a house sound against the damp and the rot
13:35that trouble a home.
13:37The same wisdom of dry timbers and moving air turned to the whole of the house.
13:42For a dry sound house is proof against a great many troubles at once.
13:47There is a right and an old way to keep a home standing strong.
13:51That runs on care and watching more than on any bottle or powder.
13:56But this week you start with the walk round your house.
13:59You get the wood up off the ground.
14:01You pull the soil and mulch back from the walls.
14:04You mend the leaks and dry the house out.
14:07You keep the air moving beneath it.
14:09And you learn to read the mud tube and the hollow board.
14:13And you will understand, as the old builders did,
14:16that you never fight a termite with a powder at all.
14:19You keep it out by keeping your house dry and your wood off the earth.
14:23And you call for help without shame the day you find it has come anyway.
14:28The house kept the plain old way is the one that remembers how the old builders kept a home sound
14:34for a hundred years
14:35with dry timbers, moving air and a watchful eye.
14:39And that is a thing we are only just starting to remember.
14:42Bye bye.
14:42Bye bye.
Comments