woodworm wood worm pictures and preparation for treatment

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Yorkshire
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I enjoy the help this forum gives so I thought I'd share my experience with woodworm (which is now, unfortunetely, considerable).
Last year I discovered wood worm in my garage flat roof when having it repaired, looked for it in the loft andd found it in some timbers used by the plummer to support the header tank. The timbers there were riddled with nothing in the roof structure. I looked around my mum's house and found they had been devouring my Dad's old work bench (and even his woodedn mallet and my mum's woodedn pegs.
Yes we then went and bought a house just before christmas, I surveyed it with torch and overalls, I paid a surveyor to survey it and I got a woodworm treatment company to have a look so we would not be caught out. humph....
We all found 2 small areas of active worm activity in the loft (little trails of dust from holes. The dust is actually woodworm poo. We all checked all around the house, lifting carpets in the corner of every room and took about an hour just looking for woodworm.
I assumed we'd need to treat the loft and maybe somewhere else, I did not expect the house to be completely infected with woodworm.

You cannot see wood worm under vinyl or under carpets. You cannot even see wood worm if you look at a floor board which is riddled with wood worm, see picture. woodworm keep to the dark side. A floor board may have hundreds of exit holes and be crumbly but have no worm exit holes on the top. Wood worms live under the floor.
The kitchen floor had 3 layers of vinyl, no matter how hard you look at that you wwon't see worm holes. Whithout vinyl I think it would have collapsed, all the floor boards were crumby, most joists too.
The only way to check floor boards for wood worm is to look underneath them or try stabbing quite hard with a screw driver in the joints. Wood worm use the tongue and groove joints to move along.
If you spot any active wood worm, you can expect the worst, see photos, the kitchen is now just a mudd floor. The prep for spraying the whole house was a knackering 5 day job, lifting floor boards so the bloke with the sprayer could get good coverage. see photos. Wood worm appears in colonies, kitchen, under the stairs, upstairs loo, back bedroom
The water based insect spray is supposed to last 7 years with the life cycle of the woodworm maggot being 4 years before it turns into a beeetle and eats its way out. Each year for 5 years we will look out for beetles in May.Treatmeent for the whole house including loft cost £1300, the prep is only possible in an empty house and is huge, we will have creaky floor boards forever but hoefully no more worm damage.
Good hunting, keith
 
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