March 2010 / Vol.7 / Issue 3

Hello and Welcome to the March Greenpest News. Each month we aim to provide you with some useful information, keeping it short sweet and pertinent.

Contents

1. Pest Talk - Home insulation - Is it a mistake?
2. Monthly Special.
3. Back Issues.

Pest Talk

Free roof insulation has come to an end.  Thank goodness!  It’s been both a boom and bust time for the established insulation industry and the many entrepreneurs who jumped on the gravy train to make a quick buck from yet another government blunder. 

And let there be no doubt, it was a huge blunder.  The consequences were never thought out and the sacking of labour minister Peter Garrett is a mere formality to satisfy the baying for blood from the media.  I doubt Garrett dreamt this ‘botch up’ on his own.  No doubt, it took a full team of public service academics to conjure up such a harebrained idea.

I feel sorry for those insulation companies that are now left will thousands of dollars worth of stock that will take years to shift but that’s what happens when you jump on a rickety band wagon.  Perhaps they should switch to the new industry that has arisen – companies that come and remove the insulation for a fee.

Perhaps you are wondering why I am so against ceiling insulation?  So let me give you three reasons which I will elaborate on:

• It isn’t really necessary and there are better ways to cool your home.
• It encourages a wide range of vermin and in turn makes control and clean up much more difficult.
• It takes away one of the most important parts of a termite inspection and may even encourage termites.

Apart from Tasmania, Australia is mainly a tropical country.  The chief problem for our homes is staying cool.  It is not staying warm in winter.  Our winters are mild and short.  In temperate and cool countries you will see that homes have built in heating.  They don’t worry about the heat of summer any more than we worry about the chill of winter.

If you want to cool a home, then the obvious solution is to remove the heat and hot air from the roof void, and the easiest way to do this is with roof vents (solar powered) or whirlybirds (wind powered).  How do I know?  Over the past 20 years I have been inside many roof voids conducting inspections for termites.  When the home has roof vents correctly installed it is surprisingly cool.  It also helps if sisalation is installed directly over the roof battens.  And of course the eaves need proper intake vents so that cool air can replace the hot air that is exhausted via the roof vents.

The vents need to be mounted as high on the apex of the roof as possible.  A five year old can understand this because they have seen a hot air balloon go up.  Hot air rises.  As hot air leaves the roof void, cool air is sucked in from the shade under the eaves.  This is no help in winter, I admit, but most Australians really don’t need roof insulation to keep their homes warm.

Moving on, when insulation is placed above the ceiling then rats, mice, cockies and silverfish have excellent additional places to hide and nest.  Yes, they can still be treated by a professional without too much extra difficulty, but if a rat should die under the insulation material there is not much chance that it will be easily found and removed.

Now, for our third and most important point and the main reason we are so strongly anti-insulation… it greatly hinders termite management. 

There are few places during an inspection where a termite inspector can actually see the timber structure of the house, in particular a high risk home built on a concrete slab.  The wall cladding encloses the timber frame supporting the roof and the timber architraves around windows and doors are usually painted.  But the timber trusses in the roof void are open to view in all their natural glory.  If there are termites to be found, the roof void is often the place where they are revealed and observable to the eye.

Unless of course, the roof is insulated; in which case you will see a clause in the termite inspection report somewhat like this…  “Due to insulation material in the roof void, no inspection was possible.”  The rest of the fine print will go on to explain that the inspection is incomplete and as such no responsibility can be taken by the company carrying out the inspection.  In other words, the inspection isn’t worth the paper it is written on.  And whether we agree with this practice or not, it’s fair enough because an important area of the house was not properly inspected.

On the flip side, if you have a roof full of old termite damage, probably the best thing you can do is to insulate your roof so that you can hide the evidence and increase the value and saleability of your home.

If you have a home with termite damage in the roof, you will love me for the preceding advice, but if you are the buyer you will curse me.  And that is my point.  Insulation in the roof makes it very difficult for a termite inspector to do his job properly.

To exacerbate matters further, if your home does have termites in the roof void and you have insulation, it’s going to make any kind of treatment that much more difficult and consequently more expensive, not to mention the increased cost of repairs.

Our staff will still get up in a roof when it has insulation material and do the best to inspect the timbers that they can actually see.  If however you have the metal insulation that has recently killed some installers, we are afraid that workplace health and safety (and common sense) prohibits us from entering your roof void to do any kind of inspection or pest service.  You may not think that there are bare wires in your roof, but if you have ever had rats in your roof, there is every chance that they have gnawed the plastic insulation off of some cabling and consequently exposed some live wires.  Our inspectors are always careful where they step, but if insulation covers the wires, then it’s Russian roulette climbing through a roof void and they don’t get paid enough to play that game.

We regularly point out in our newsletters that termites are very attracted to moist areas and it is important to ensure that there are no dripping taps around your home and that air conditioning drains and hot water overflows are properly hooked up to the homes drainage system.  This is especially important during dry spells which we had for the last 5 – 10 years… but not now.

The big wet affects termites and in fact, too much moisture can be detrimental to termites.  It’s one of the features of our Green Termite Baits – they don’t flood when the ground is soaked.  Plastic baits with timber inserts commonly found in most other baiting systems do flood and sometimes take a long time to drain.

Termites are also affected by temperature, which is why there are no major termite species that damage homes to be found in Tasmania.  It’s also the reason why termites may be active in a home during the summer months in Canberra, but inactive during the winter months. 

Which brings us back to home insulation…There may be no direct scientific evidence or studies done at the moment to show if an insulated home is more or less, or equally likely to have termites all year round than a non-insulated home, but a simple extrapolation of known termite behaviour could lead one to believe that it is a likely possibility.  Many home owners have taken up the free insulation offer from the government.  I suspect that in the next five years we will begin to see if these homes are more susceptible to long term damage or not.

We are not trying to be alarmist and we are not suggesting you immediately rip out your insulation.  But be aware and take extra precautions if you can:

• Make sure you have a termite inspection from a reputable firm at least once a year.
• Consider installing Ec2c Termite Windows throughout your home.
• If you don’t already have a Green Termite Baiting System – consider putting one in around the perimeter of your home.

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The Greenpest News is Published by J & A Furnell Nominees P/L; Shop 23a Franklin Square, 60 Railway Street, Mudgeeraba, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. The opinions expressed in this newsletter are those of Jerry Furnell. The reader is encouraged to seek further information from appropriate government and statutory departments before taking any action based on this material alone.

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Always... At your service,

Jerry Furnell
Green Pest Control & Green Termite Bait Systems.
Phone 1800 6 12345.

Copyright 2010 Green Termite Bait Systems & Green Pest Control. All rights reserved.

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