Termites!

So this whole basement room has been a saga.

First I went though framing and floating a new wall. All went pretty well.

Then I go to strip the baseboard from the rest of the room that’s existing and I find mold. Likely covered up by the sellers. I called an attorney and it’s basically $5G retainer to sue them. Likely not worth it in the end to go through all that.


Bought a dehumidifier and the wall moisture has come down to around 14-15%. We cut some slices of wall out and generally it has too much mold for us to leave so we are cutting out everything about 4’ from the floor. I had a load of purple drywall arrive today and will install it this weekend or next week.

I’m ripping out the drywall for the mold, I have sadly found termites even though we passed our termite inspection. They have absolutely chewed away at the 2x2 that runs the perimeter of the room and holds the baseboard in place. It’s a CMU basement wall so there’s a fur out to run electrical and for gyp board to attach to as well as rigid insulation in between.

Thankfully as far as I can tell they’re mostly contained to this baseboard area. There’s an open understair room immediately next to them that is immaculate which is what has led me to think they haven’t spread. Most of the vertical furring strips are fine and the ones that are chewed up are only chewed up a few feet above the ground.

All in all I’ve maybe seen less than 50 live bugs. Blasted them with vinegar as that’s all I had when I discovered them. Went to Lowe’s and got indoor pesticide and have now sprayed that along the base of the entire room. Once we rip the rest of the drywall and insulation out, we will spray basically everything that is exposed again for good measure. All new wood we will lay down to replace what’s rotted away will be PT. It appears everything that they’ve chewed through is not PT. It’s a 1970s house so not sure when PT wood became a thing. I have also laid ant traps that have poison they carry back to the nest so hopefully that will work on anything we can’t see.


Before I board these walls back up, is there anything else I can do for this or am I on the right track? Since I’ve sprayed the actual pesticide I haven’t seen any live bugs.


Aside from them slowly destroying my house it’s actually pretty fascinating to see the tunnel networks they chew away with in the wood. They also have left an arse load of droppings in the walls. So that’ll be a joy to clean up.