Subject: Re: Carpenter Ants advice wanted
From: William D Hulet <whulet@uoguelph.ca>
Organization: University of Guelph
Date: Wed, 3 Sep 1997 11:49:50 -0400
Message-ID: <MOD$970903.8169@rec.gardens.ecosystems>
References: <MOD$970903.3503@rec.gardens.ecosystems>
On Wed, 3 Sep 1997, Little Pua wrote:
>
> I am having to rebuild part of a porch due to severe damage from carpenter
> ants, which is costing me about $5000. It looks like extensive termite
> damage but we found the culpret and it is carpenter ants. I am told the
> ants will actually have a nest up to 100 feet away somewhere on my property
> and that I will never really get rid of them until I find this nest. My 1/2
> acre garden is organic and I would like to keep it this way, but I am
> surely being tested now. I cannot afford the type of damage they have done
> on my home. I welcome any advice anyone might have. I have not yet found
> the main nest and am afraid they will just move to another part of my house
> after I fix this area. I have a brick home with woood framing.
Is it possible to redesign the porch so it can exist in your
ecosystem? As someone who's worked as a maintenance person the odd summer
I've often been appalled by the ridiculous way people build things that
are totally innapropriate for a specific environmental context. (I once
spent months changing spalled bricks on an enormous outdoor walkway in the
middle of Southern Ontario. The architects in this area were copying
designs from California without taking into account that mysterious event
known as "winter".) You might want to see if you can find an elderly
carpenter and ask how they used to do things in the "old days" before
tradespeople were dumbed-down.
A second question to ask is whether the carpenter ants are really
the problem. Some wood chompers don't actually eat sound wood, only stuff
that's already rotten. If this is the case, then you should think about
how your porch design and placement might be causing rot. Contrary to the
"Thompson's Water Seal" ads, there usually is no reason why outdoor wood
projects should rot as long as the joints are designed properly and things
have a chance to drain between rains. (There are wooden churches in
Scandinavia that are almost 1,000 years old!)
If the ants exist in an underground nest, and they are the problem
and not just a symptom, it might be an option to isolate the porch from
the nest. For example, I've always heard that wood should never, ever be
allowed to touch soil. Instead, piles should always be made of concrete
or stone. This means that termites can't build connection tubes between
your building and their underground nest. In the case of your porch, if
it is built with wooden piles driven into the ground you might consider
jacking it up and replaicing them with concrete pillars. (Solid, not
concrete blocks, which I imagine the critters could crawl up in the
center.)
I'm not an expert by any means, but I think that these are the
right sort of questions to ask, not what sort of poison will kill the
nest.