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Checking for termites yourself: a fifteen-minute walk, touching nothing

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You can learn a great deal about your own house in a quarter of an hour with a torch and a screwdriver handle. What you cannot do is anything with the pointy end.

What an owner's check can and cannot do

Checking for termites yourself is worth doing, and it helps to be clear about why. Most of the timber in a house is concealed (inside wall cavities, above ceilings, under floors, behind linings). None of it is visible to you or to anyone else without equipment. A walk-around finds the evidence that has reached a surface. That is a real and useful subset, because termites usually reveal themselves at a surface eventually, and finding it three months earlier matters.

What it does not do is clear the house. A professional timber pest inspection works to AS 4349.3, covers the accessible areas systematically. And uses moisture meters, thermal imaging and movement detection to read the parts you cannot see. Your walk is an early-warning system between those inspections, not a replacement for one.

The four rules before you start

These matter more than anything you find:

  • Tap, do not probe. Use the handle of a screwdriver, not the blade. Pushing through a suspect board opens the gallery.
  • Break nothing. Not a mud tube, not a blistered section of paint, not a crust of mud on a pier.
  • Spray nothing. No insecticide, no surface spray, nothing. It does not work and it makes the problem harder to find.
  • Photograph everything you find, and leave it where it is. Evidence in place is worth far more to the person who comes to look.

All four exist for one reason: disturbed termites relocate. Break their route and the colony re-enters the building somewhere concealed, and the damage continues where nobody is watching. Why spraying termites yourself makes it worse explains what that also does to the treatment options available afterwards.

Outside: the perimeter

Start here, because this is where the house meets the soil and the soil is where subterranean termites live. Walk the full perimeter with a torch, looking down.

You are looking for mud tubes running up brick, render, concrete stumps or steel. Pencil-width to thumb-width, sometimes flat and spread out on a wall. Check the weep holes in the brickwork. Check where garden beds, paving, concrete paths or mulch are built up against the wall, because that is where a chemical or physical barrier gets bridged and entry becomes concealed.

Then check the timber in the yard that nobody thinks of as part of the house: fence posts, pergola posts, retaining wall sleepers, decking bearers, old stumps, stored firewood and offcuts under the house. A colony is usually feeding there before it finds the building.

Underneath: the subfloor

If your house has a subfloor and safe access, this is the highest-value ten minutes of the whole walk. With a torch, look at the piers and stumps for mud tubes running up to the bearers, at the bearers and joists for mud staining. And at the ground for dampness and standing water.

Note whether the vents are clear or blocked by garden beds, and whether anything is stored down there against the timber. Damp, still, unventilated subfloors are the single most reliable set of conducive conditions in an Australian house: moisture, subfloors and ventilation covers what to fix. Do not crawl into a confined space you are not confident about, and do not go in if there is any sign of unsafe flooring above you.

Inside: the tap test

Work room by room with the screwdriver handle and tap along skirting boards, architraves and door jambs. Listen for a hollow or papery change against the same timber a few metres away. Pay particular attention to wet areas (under and behind the bathroom, the laundry, the kitchen, the hot water unit) and to anywhere that has ever had a leak.

Look for paint that is rippled, blistered or sunken. Look for doors and windows that have started to stick when nothing else has changed, and for floors that feel soft underfoot. In spring and summer, check the windowsills and the inside of light fittings for discarded wings, which are shed in matched pairs after a flight. What termite damage actually looks like has the full list of surface signs.

The roof void, if you can see it safely

A torch from the manhole is enough. Look at the top plates and the underside of the roof timbers for mud staining or tubes descending. And at any point where a chimney, a wall or a conduit passes through. Nests above ceiling level are less common than subfloor activity but they are not rare, and this is one place where a quick look costs nothing. Stay on the manhole ladder: do not walk on ceiling joists.

Where this stops

If you find anything on this list, you have done the job. Photograph it, leave it, and book a timber pest inspection, saying what you found and where. If you find nothing, that is genuinely good news about the accessible parts of your house. It tells you nothing about the rest of it, which is why how often you need a termite inspection is a separate question. A walk-around does not change the answer.

Frequently asked questions

How often should I do this walk myself?

It is a reasonable thing to do a few times a year, and worth doing after heavy rain or any plumbing leak, because both change the moisture conditions around the house. It does not change how often a professional inspection is needed.

I tapped a skirting board and it sounded hollow. Should I open it up to check?

No. That is the moment the whole walk is designed to avoid. A hollow sound is exactly what an inspector wants to find intact, and opening the board disturbs whatever is inside it into moving somewhere you cannot see.

Does finding nothing mean my house is clear of termites?

No. It means the accessible surfaces show nothing today. Most timber in a house is concealed, and reading the concealed parts needs the equipment and the systematic coverage of an inspection carried out to the Australian standard.

Sources

What this page explains is based on these official sources. If you check one and it does not match what you read here, send it to us and the article gets corrected.

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