Termite infestation is an ever-present pest problem in Singapore and can cause very extensive damage to buildings and may endanger the life of occupants within. Terminator Tube is the world's first non-chemical and non-toxic professional termite monitoring and attractant baiting system. It can create a full property barrier defence system against termite infestation. Specially designed for water injection, the Terminator Tube is suitable for tropical and arid climates. To display this page you need a browser with JavaScript support.
Precautions:

- Avoiding contact of susceptible timber with ground by using termite-resistant concrete, steel or masonry foundation with appropriate barriers. Even so, termites are able to bridge these with shelter tubes, and it has been known for termites to chew through piping made of soft plastics and even lead to exploit moisture. In general, new buildings should be constructed with embedded physical termite barriers so that there are no easy means for termites to gain concealed entry. While barriers of poisoned soil have been in general use since the 1970s, it is preferable that these be used only for existing buildings without effective physical barriers.

- The intent of termite barriers (whether physical, poisoned soil, or some of the new poisoned plastics) is to prevent the termites from gaining unseen access to structures. In most instances, termites attempting to enter a barriered building will be forced into the less favourable approach of building shelter tubes up the outside walls and thus they be clearly visible both to the building occupants and a range of predators. Regular inspection by a competent (trained and experienced) inspector is the best defence.

- Timber treatment.

- Use of timber that is naturally resistant to termites such as Canarium australianum (Turpentine Tree), Callitris glaucophylla (White Cypress), or one of the Sequoias. Note that there is no tree species whose every individual tree yields only timbers that are immune to termite damage, so that even with well known termite-resistant timber types, there will occasionally be pieces that are attacked.


When termites have already penetrated a building, the first action is usually to destroy the colony with insecticides before removing the termites' means of access and fixing the problems that encouraged them in the first place. Baits (feeder stations) with small quantities of disruptive insect hormones or other very slow acting toxins have become the preferred least-toxic management tool in most western countries. This has replaced the dusting of toxins direct into termite tunnels which had been widely done since the early 1930s (originating in Australia). The main dust toxicants have been the inorganic metallic poison arsenic trioxide, insect growth regulators (hormones) such as Triflumuron and, more recently, fipronil. Blowing dusts into termite workings is a highly skilled process. All these slow-acting poisons can be distributed by the workers for considerable periods (hours to weeks) before any symptoms occur and are capable of destroying the entire colony. More modern variations include chlorfluazuron, Diflubenzuron, hexaflumuron, and Novaflumuron as bait toxicants and fipronil and imidacloprid as soil poisons. Soil poisons are the least-preferred method of control as this requires much larger doses of toxin and results in uncontrollable release to the environment.



This Article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia articles "Termite".
Termite PhotoTermite infestation is an ever-present pest problem in Singapore and can cause very extensive damage to buildings and will endanger the life of occupants within. Learn more about these pests and how to control them with the following termite facts and tips.