How to Avoid Sharing Your Timber Floors With Hungry Beetles

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Timber flooring can make any home look beautiful, and your visitors will certainly appreciate this beauty. Having said that, you don't want to share the beauty with just anyone (or anything). There are a number of bugs and beetles who might not appreciate the look of your timber flooring but who will certainly appreciate the taste. How can you tell if you have a beetle problem in your timber flooring? And how can you banish those beetles?

Kiln-Dried Wood

There are certain measures that might be in place to prevent bugs and beetles from making their home inside your timber flooring, and much of this takes place before your flooring is installed. If the timber is kiln-dried prior to being shaped into flooring, this will kill any eggs or larvae that might be present. While this will not prevent any bugs from making their home inside your flooring, it will at least prevent it from becoming a bug hatchery. If you're in the market for new timber flooring, you should check to see that the timber in question has been kiln-dried.

Wood Sealant

It can also be advisable to protect timber flooring with a sealant. This is a translucent protectant that (as the name suggests) seals the timber. This protective coating can prevent beetles from boring their way inside and potentially ruining your timber flooring. But what about timber flooring that has already been installed?

Common Beetles

There are a number of beetles that cause problems for your timber flooring, although some of them are worse than others. The wood-boring beetle (pentaminus rhyncoliformis) eats its way through the wood, leaving eggs which will hatch into larvae, creating more issues as these larvae mature and also begin to eat their way through the wood. Their activities can eventually affect the structural integrity of the wood. Though more common in living or recently felled wood, the auger beetle (xylopsocus gibbicollis) can also cause problems for timber flooring. Auger beetles are the lesser evil, as they only bore into the surface of the wood, leaving the heartwood alone. The structural integrity of the wood is unaffected, and yet the numerous small holes in the timber are not aesthetically pleasing.

An Inspection

If you notice a number of small homes in your timber flooring (and they will be miniscule), then you will need to arrange a pest inspection. If the deep burrowing wood-boring beetle is identified, then you might wish to also have your floors inspected to assess the level of damage. If it's something like an auger beetle, then you know that the damage is just cosmetic. Any living beetles and larvae can be removed by a pest control expert. Depending on the severity of any beetle-inflicted damage, you might need to have your floors sanded to remove the holes. The floor can then be protected with a sealant to prevent reinfestation.

You don't know just how destructive any bugs in your timber flooring might be. This is why it's important to arrange a pest inspection as soon as possible so that the necessary action can be taken.

24 August 2016