Termites are quiet. There is no noise, no smell in most cases, and no visible
insect for years at a time. By the time something is obvious, the colony has
usually been established for a while.
The signs exist. They are just small, and they sit in places nobody looks.
The short answer
Look for small pellet piles that keep reappearing, pencil-width mud tubes on
foundation walls, discarded wings near windows, and wood that sounds hollow when
tapped. Any one of these is worth an inspection. None of them are conclusive on
their own, and none of them tell you how far the problem has gone.
The five signs worth knowing
1. Pellet piles that come back
Small mounds of what looks like coarse sand or coffee grounds, on a windowsill,
a garage shelf, or the floor under a beam. You sweep them up. A week later they
are back.
That is the most common first sign in this area, and the reason it gets missed is
that it looks like sawdust or dirt. The tell is the repetition. Sawdust does not
regenerate.
2. Mud tubes
Narrow tubes of dried soil running up the outside of a foundation, across a pier,
or along a crawl space wall. About the width of a pencil, sometimes flatter.
These are shelter tunnels. They are also the easiest sign to find, because they
are on the exterior of surfaces rather than inside them. Walk the perimeter of
your foundation once a year and look at where concrete meets wood.
3. Discarded wings
A small pile of translucent wings on a windowsill, in a bathtub, or near a light
fixture. Usually all roughly the same size, often stuck together.
Winged reproductives leave a mature colony to start new ones, then shed. Finding
wings inside means a swarm happened, and swarms come from established colonies.
4. Wood that sounds wrong
Tap along baseboards, door frames, and exposed beams with a knuckle or a
screwdriver handle. Solid wood has a solid sound. Wood with galleries behind it
sounds hollow or papery.
Try it on wood you know is sound first, so you have a comparison. The difference
is obvious once you have heard both.
5. Doors and windows that stopped fitting
Frames that stick, or a door that suddenly does not latch, can mean a lot of
things — settling, humidity, a foundation issue. But framing that has lost
material behind the trim is one of them, particularly when it appears alongside
any of the signs above.
Where to actually look
Most people inspect the middle of rooms. Termites work the edges:
- The garage perimeter, especially where stored boxes meet the wall
- The crawl space hatch and the first few feet inside
- Under sinks and behind toilets, where slow leaks create the moisture
subterranean termites need - Second-floor shower and tub surrounds, where a failed pan can run for years
- Where siding meets soil around the exterior
- Attic framing, if there is access
Bring a flashlight and hold it at a low angle to the surface rather than pointing
it straight on. Raking light shows texture that direct light flattens out.
What these signs do not tell you
Finding a sign tells you something is there. It does not tell you:
- Which species — that changes the entire treatment path, and it is covered
in our guide to
drywood versus subterranean termites - How many colonies — one visible sign frequently accompanies others that are
not visible - How much damage exists — surface evidence and structural impact are only
loosely related - Whether it is termites at all — soft, crumbling wood is often
dry rot instead
That gap is the reason inspections exist. What you can see from the finished side
of a wall is a fraction of what is happening on the other side of it.
If you find something
Leave it in place. The pellets, the tube, the wings — they are evidence, and
they are more useful to an inspector than your description of them.
Photograph it with a landmark in frame so the location is unambiguous later.
Do not start opening things up. Every hole you make in painted siding or
sealed trim is a new way for water to get in, and water is the condition that
attracts the problem you are trying to find.
Clear access before the appointment. Boxes away from garage walls, crawl
space hatch reachable, attic access clear. Areas that cannot be reached get
recorded as inaccessible, and that is exactly where you least want a blank spot.
And if you find nothing
That is worth something, but not everything. A homeowner walkthrough covers the
accessible, finished surfaces of a house. Most of a structure is neither.
In this region, with housing stock that runs from pre-war to mid-century to new
construction, the interval between inspections is usually a matter of the age of
the house and its history. If nobody has looked in a decade, that is the answer
to when you should.
J&M Termite Control has inspected Bay Area homes from Mountain View since
1973, under California Branch 3 registration #5223.
Request an inspection or read about
what happens during one.
