Termites.

[floatingkiwi]

Will termites eat a fifty year old wooden folkboat?
Excuse my lack of what may be common knowledge here in the good old USA but I am not from here. What I have learned about the little detritivorous monsters is how to identify them. They are everywhere. Loose wings and wingless flat abdomened brown shiny specimens walking aimlessly over surfaces of many descriptions outside.
They have got me a little worried I tell ya. What shall I do?

[Robert L.]

If it is on the ground - yup, if not probably not. They live in the ground and don't like to be exposed other than in the spring when they mate and start new underground colonies. In areas that have a real dry season, such as Petaluma they wait until the start of the rainy season in the fall to mate. If the boat is on a trailer you will be unlikely to have a problem. But if it is blocked up look for dirt tubes leading up the supports. That being said termites aren't the only pests that could chew up your boat. Carpenter ants and post beetles come to mind. Wasps and hornets can chew through the finish and start turning your boat into paper to make their nests out of. This of course means exposed bare wood to start rotting, to say nothing of the surprise attacks when you lift the tarp to check out your boat.

I guess if it were me, the next time I was at the boat ramp or marina I would just ask the locals if they had any problems.

[Jay Greer]

Here in California we have both subterainian as well as dry wood termites.
The dry wood variety well often migrate looking for fresh wood when the colony becomes too large. This, most often happens, in the fall on hot days that follow rain. The critters will fly, land on a wooden surface and proceed to bore their way in. In this case, if your boat is infected, you have about a year's grace period before the eggs hatch and the larve begin to eat up your boat along with the adult insects. Their is only one way, that will assure killing the critters and that is fumigation by a reputable termite service. Individual components such as oars, boat hooks, tillers and other apertinances can be placed in a meat storage freeze locker for a week which will also kill the bugs. Another way is to seal components in a air tight bag and fill it with CO2. Oxygen deprivation will kill them as well.
I have gone this route some four times so I am very familiar with the problem.
Jay

[paladin]

Go to the local safeway store and buy all their dry ice.....have the boat (depends on how large) sealed totally in plastic wrap....leave a door to put in the dry ice......replace dry ice twice a week...just leave one tiny ice pick hole up topsides for the oxygen to leave. I got rid of southeast asia bug critters that way.

[oznabrag]

If it is on the ground - yup, if not probably not. They live in the ground and don't like to be exposed other than in the spring when they mate and start new underground colonies. In areas that have a real dry season, such as Petaluma they wait until the start of the rainy season in the fall to mate. If the boat is on a trailer you will be unlikely to have a problem. But if it is blocked up look for dirt tubes leading up the supports. That being said termites aren't the only pests that could chew up your boat. Carpenter ants and post beetles come to mind. Wasps and hornets can chew through the finish and start turning your boat into paper to make their nests out of. This of course means exposed bare wood to start rotting, to say nothing of the surprise attacks when you lift the tarp to check out your boat.

I guess if it were me, the next time I was at the boat ramp or marina I would just ask the locals if they had any problems.

Just a quibble. Carpenter ants do not eat wood, nor do they destroy wood.

They get their name from their habit of removing rotten wood to make way for their nests. If you see carpenter ants in your house, it means they have discovered a rotten area, and are busily cleaning it out to make room for their new digs.

[Robert L.]

Just a quibble. Carpenter ants do not eat wood, nor do they destroy wood.

They get their name from their habit of removing rotten wood to make way for their nests.

Hmmm! That actually sounds like it could be a useful trait. Sort of like using maggots to clear away dead tissue after sever burns.

Gotta be a way to capitalize on this.

[floatingkiwi]

Dry ice and freezers. Now there is a feasible, practical, sensible and logical solution I can do withot too much problem. Thanks Guys.
Aah, I inspected the boat thoroughly inside, every inch, spraying it with Raid, in case some had just arrived,and found a total of two and a half termites and one single wing. They did not look at all hungry and active in any way other than hiding under wood shavings, wishing they had landed on something a little less salty. I have a lot of rock salt regularly thrown around in there and rinsed into the blocked up bilge and remopped all over again with more salt. I blew out all the cracks and nooks and vacuumed for an hour and found nothing that bothered me. I think it wouldnt hurt to take your advice into the physical application to be sure. The boat is high of the ground on a steel trailer.There is no evidence on any surfaces leading groundward of mud tunnels and the like.
Thanks again.
Bloody insects.

[RFNK]

Hmmm! That actually sounds like it could be a useful trait. Sort of like using maggots to clear away dead tissue after sever burns.

Gotta be a way to capitalize on this.


There is! We have serious termite problems in Oz and I've had several invasions in the house but we also have lots of black ants. People seem to want to get rid of all crawlies out of the house but I find black ants (and green ants, a bit bigger with a nasty bite!) really useful. They invade termites' nests, clean out all the rotten wood (as above) and then proceed to colonize and defend their new territory. I think spraying all over the inside and outside of houses the way many people do is crazy because of this. As long as you maintain a way of checking that termites aren't tracking up into the house or boat, it seems to me that spraying just kills off your friends! Rick

[Bob Triggs]

Dry ice and freezers. Now there is a feasible, practical, sensible and logical solution I can do withot too much problem. Thanks Guys.
Aah, I inspected the boat thoroughly inside, every inch, spraying it with Raid, in case some had just arrived,and found a total of two and a half termites and one single wing. They did not look at all hungry and active in any way other than hiding under wood shavings, wishing they had landed on something a little less salty. I have a lot of rock salt regularly thrown around in there and rinsed into the blocked up bilge and remopped all over again with more salt. I blew out all the cracks and nooks and vacuumed for an hour and found nothing that bothered me. I think it wouldnt hurt to take your advice into the physical application to be sure. The boat is high of the ground on a steel trailer.There is no evidence on any surfaces leading groundward of mud tunnels and the like.
Thanks again.
Bloody insects.

Be aware that handling dry ice in an enclosed space could kill you yourself very, very quickly! So handle with care and plenty of ventilation around YOU! whle you are handling it.

[bluedog225]

Go to the local safeway store and buy all their dry ice.....have the boat (depends on how large) sealed totally in plastic wrap....leave a door to put in the dry ice......replace dry ice twice a week...just leave one tiny ice pick hole up topsides for the oxygen to leave. I got rid of southeast asia bug critters that way.


Just for fun, take a piece of dry ice in your gloved hand, hold it to a pot or a pan. It makes a god awful racket. Since CO2 goes straight from solid to gas through sublimation , the noise is the ice hitting the metal as it goes from one state to the other thereby leaving a space (I think).

[floatingkiwi]

Be aware that handling dry ice in an enclosed space could kill you yourself very, very quickly! So handle with care and plenty of ventilation around YOU! whle you are handling it.
Yes Thanks. CO2. The same waste we breathe out cannot be too good for you unless you are a green plant in the daytime.
Hey, I could get the lady next door to talk into the sealed environment if I run short of ice at all.
Kinda sticks to your flesh aswell right?

[martin schulz]

...have the boat (depends on how large) sealed totally in plastic wrap...

Which is the perfect solution to hinder termites to eat the boat, but lets the boat rot to certain "death" instead.

[Robert L.]

Which is the perfect solution to hinder termites to eat the boat, but lets the boat rot to certain "death" instead.

I took the wrap the boat in plastic wrap/dry ice thing to mean wrap it up, kill the bugs then unwrap it and resolve any damage. I don't think the intent was to store it like a wool sweater.

But I could be wrong.

[dredbob]

Borax and borates kill both ants and temites, so using one of the borate wood preservatives (Tim-Bor, etc) might do double duty.

Bob

[Jay Greer]

No need to deal with dry ice. Go to a beverage machine service co. and rent a tank of CO2. Less hassel and infinatly more practical.
Jay

[WX]

I didn't think you blokes had termites over there. You certainly can't put wood in contact with the ground here, it would be termite food very quickly.

[Bob Cleek]

Kiwi, it's dry wood termite migration time here in our neighborhood. It's just rained and off they go in swarms. We have a particular problem with them in the Petaluma watershed because of all the old barns and chicken coops all over the place which are just piles of rotten wood. People don't remove them and they become magnets for the critters. When your local rotten farm out building becomes too crowded for their taste, they go looking to relocate. You'll occasionally see buildings tarped with circus tent-looking material. They pump the tenting full of gas to kill the critters, or so they say. They seem to be everywhere and the tenting and gas treatment ain't cheap. Just one of those things we live with. Munch, munch, munch... 24/7! LOL They prefer dry decayed wood, so they aren't that big a problem with new sound wood. They are completely different from wet wood termites, which live in the soil and build tubes to travel into wood. The wet wood termites need a moist environment to survive, which is why they build the tubes to travel in and not get dried out. The dry wood termites are "airborne." It's a coordinated assault by the "infantry" and the "airforce."