Caboolture is a moisture problem before it is a pest problem. The town sits on the Caboolture River flats, the floodplains through here are extensive, and the mid and lower catchment sits on sandstone that is largely impervious. Water that falls on the coast at Bribie drains straight through the sand. Water that falls here tends to sit.
That matters because subterranean termites are moisture dependent. Damp ground, damp subfloors and damp garden beds against a wall are the conditions they work best in, and Caboolture supplies all three. Add a lot of older housing stock around the town centre and you have a suburb where termite inspections are not a luxury item.
The wet also drives everything else. Rodents move in off the creek lines and the farm country after heavy rain, cockroaches come up through drains and subfloors, and mosquitoes breed in anything that holds water for a week.
Caboolture has four fairly distinct kinds of house and they do not get treated the same way. What yours is built on decides where termites get in, what can actually be inspected, and what a sensible treatment looks like.
Timber and fibro, often with a subfloor you can get under. The oldest stock in the area and the highest termite exposure.
The eighties and nineties estates. No subfloor to inspect from, so the work is the slab edge, the weep holes and the perimeter.
Central Lakes, Cab West, Riverlands and the rest. Usually a barrier put in at construction. Worth knowing what kind and when it was last checked.
Upper Caboolture, Bellmere, Moodlu and out towards Wamuran. Sheds, outbuildings and a bushland edge that brings rodents and ticks with it.
On a slab home the termites have a short list of ways in: the slab edge, the weep holes, and the service penetrations where pipes and cables come through the wall. There is no subfloor to crawl under, so everything has to be done from the outside.
The treatment goes into the soil around the full perimeter of the building, along the garden beds and at every point where soil, mulch or a garden bed sits hard up against the wall. Those are the spots that matter, because soil banked against a slab edge gives termites a covered run straight past the edge of the building.
On the Caboolture flats the ground holds moisture rather than shedding it, which is exactly the condition subterranean termites work best in. It is why a perimeter treatment here is worth doing properly rather than cheaply.
The older homes around the Caboolture town centre are a different job again, and in one important way an easier one. Timber and fibro on stumps usually means a subfloor, and a subfloor means someone can get underneath with a torch and a moisture meter and actually look.
That is where the evidence is. Mud tubes running up the stumps and the piers, damp bearers and joists, and workings in the timber that never show themselves inside the house. By the time you notice a bubbling skirting board or a door that suddenly will not close, it has usually been going on for months.
The trade off is that these houses are also the most exposed. Older timber, ground level that has crept up over fifty years of garden beds and paving, and subfloor ventilation that stopped working properly a long time ago. Getting under there once a year is the cheapest insurance available.
Whatever gets done, it needs checking. The Australian Standard treats twelve months as the maximum gap between termite inspections, and termite damage generally sits outside standard home insurance, which is the part people tend to find out afterwards.
That is a standard three bedroom home, treated inside and out for ants, cockroaches, silverfish and webbing spiders. It includes your external shed or garage and the roof void, which is where a lot of quotes quietly stop.
A bigger house, an acreage block, a second building, difficult subfloor access or a rental being turned over between tenants will change the number. Termite inspections are quoted separately. Ring and describe the place and you will get a real figure rather than a range.
Kitchen, bathrooms, living areas and internal skirtings, treated for ants, cockroaches, silverfish and spiders.
External walls, eaves, window frames, weep holes and the perimeter, which is where most of it comes in from.
Your external shed or garage is part of the standard treatment, not quoted as an extra afterwards.
Included as standard. It is where spiders and rodents set up, and it is the part most quotes leave out.
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