Forever Learning

Today I learned about termites. We had our pest control contractor come out and inspect our home for termites as our original 5-year construction warranty on termites is about to expire. Here's what I learned:

• Arizona is full of termites. There's no practical way to guarantee a house will never get termites. It's a question of minimizing the risk.
• Arizona homes are largely built on a "slab" -- that is, a solid concrete pad with no basements or crawl spaces. Our home is like that. About 10 years ago they perfected a way of pouring that slab called "post tension." Wikipedia, of course, has a write-up here. In short, it's a process by which a mesh of cables is placed in the wet concrete. When the concrete hardens, they come out and stretch the cables, putting the whole concrete slab under internal tension ... it essentially holds the concrete in place. It prevents cracking. Termites love cracks. That's how they enter the homes ... through cracks in the slab. But with post-tension concrete slabs, there are almost no more cracks, which means far fewer termites.
• The pesticides used by the industry are almost all manufactured by pharmaceutical companies, and they often manufacture those chemicals right along side products meant for human consumption. Ultimately, the chemistries are very similar.
  
• My house has no evidence of termites.
• A treatment and re-warranty would run about $600 to $1000.
• Doing nothing is an option. Given we have the pest control guy come out once a month -- a near necessity in Arizona, given all the different types of crawling critters -- he watches for external evidence of termites. We could just wait to hear word from him, which would be an early warning of termite trouble. We could then treat just that localized termite infestation.

So there you go ... your "what did I learn today" report. :-)