If you have live termites in your home, you have termite damage.  What pest control companies try to sell you is a termite treatment to eliminate the termites.  What they usually do NOT tell you is that the presence of termites means you have termite damage of SOME KIND.

Realistically, if you have termites, there are numerous questions you can and should ask such as:

1. How long do you think they have been here?

2. How or where are they coming into the house?

3. Are there signs of damage that you see? 

4.  Are there signs they have been here before?

It is very important to ask these questions and it is well worth it to have a contractor open up areas where you find termite activity.  This can be done easily around door frames, window frames and floor molding.  Removing covers from door frames, floor molding and window frames will provide access to the interior of the home where termites are most OFTEN found, but not always.   If there is no damage, putting the molding back on and painting and caulking is not that problematic and many homeowners can accomplish this on their own.

As mentioned before, once you have live termites, you have termite damage.  It is absolutely critical that your pest control treater finds the means of access into your house. Without it, all the chemical in the world may be missing the mark entirely. 

Remember, a liquid termite treatment means there is a liquid termite wall in the ground that the termites have to encounter or it is useless.  Pest Control operators will drill vertical penetrations in the slab such as sewer lines, but there can be accesses other than the vertical penetrations. 

I once had a Formosan termite house in the Houston area treated by Orkin for years that was decimated and barely standing.  Formosan termites are Bengal Tigers to the regular native termite kitten. 

The Formosan termites were coming up through the slab at the door threshhold where a grade stake used to set the form for the step down from the slab had been left in place or broken off.  The wooden stake was a bait for the Formosan termites anyway and by the time we discovered it, the stake was long gone, but the 1 inch and a half by half inch cavity was there with massive superhighway tunnels for the Formosan termites to travel up and down through the slab and never once encounter any chemical in the ground. 

Termites mean damage and damage means real trouble for you.  Find out what you have from the beginning and you will sleep better.