Explaining Wood Infestation Reports in Birmingham, Alabama!

Welcome to another episode of Peskies Pest Control podcast here in Birmingham Alabama with Michael and Travis. We do this podcast as a community service for Birmingham, Hoover, Vestavia Hills, Mountain Brook, Helena, Alabaster, Pelham and all other surrounding areas! Travis McGowin:<br /> Hey, so today we want to come and talk about a topic that if you have ever bought or sold a home, any kind of structure like that, you’re probably familiar with the term wood infestation report or a WDO wood destroying organism report. If you have sold real estate or bought real estate, most likely you are familiar with it. Michael, what is a wood infestation report? Michael Wienecke:<br /> So a wood infestation report, wood destroying organism, in our world is the most important thing that we do because you are buying a home or investing in a piece of property and there’s nothing worse than to find out that that piece of property has $50,000, $60,000 worth of termite damage because we’ve seen it. And my neighbor actually across the street, he bought his home and I did an inspection for him and he has about, I’d say 30, 40% of his floor joist is completely eaten out by termites. So basically it’s just where we go around, we do a full inspection top to bottom inside and out looking for any wood destroying organisms. So it could be carpenter ants, it could be termites, it could be mold, fungus, anything that is going to destroy that home. Travis McGowin:<br /> Yeah, and you know, wood destroying beetles too, that’s another one. And we don’t find, I find a lot of, especially in these crawl spaces and some of these older homes, I find a lot of old, you know, beetle damage like powder post beetles. But here lately I have found some that have active powder post beetle damage too. So you got all these things and you know, as a homeowner or a home buyer, home seller, you may actually hear a real estate agent refer to this as a pest inspection, but that’s not really an accurate description of what it is. I think when people hear pest inspection, sometimes they get the idea of, oh, you know, someone’s going to come in my house and they’re going to look and see if I got bugs. Yes and no. I mean, we are looking for some insects, but we’re not looking for crickets or cockroaches or silverfish or earwigs or anything like that. Which of course having those may, you know, may indicate that you’ve got some sort of moisture problem in the house. But we’re there looking for, like you said, termites, wood destroying beetles, wood rot, you know, those sorts of things too. So it’s crazy to think that, you know, there’s sometimes some people that miss some things in these reports when they go and do these inspections. And case in point, I have a customer who wanted to go with us for termites or termite coverage. And so I went in to inspect this house. She had just bought it. She was doing a lot of renovations herself and, you know, just several weeks before had closed and they had a wood infestation report done by another company. And so I went in to do my full inspection because of course we don’t ever take over a coverage on a house without doing our own inspection. So I came in to do the inspection and, you know, I’m looking at the walls with a light and looking for different imperfections in the wall textures. And I’m sounding the baseboards because we sound the baseboards in every house that we inspect. And all of a sudden I get to the kitchen under these big bay windows and I hear a crunch as soon as my inspection tool hits the wood. And to the naked eye, this white painted, this white painted, Lord, I’m blanking now. Michael Wienecke:<br /> Baseboard. Travis McGowin:<br /> Baseboard. Thank you. This white painted baseboard looked immaculate to the naked eye. But the moment that you hit it, it crunched and the termites had eaten the entire baseboard out across one side of this wall and the other company had completely mis