You may be astonished to realize just how much damage termites can do. But you have to bear in mind that while a single termite might be only eight millimetres (a third of an inch) in length, a colony or nest can hold between several hundred and several million termites.

Most of this number will be workers and their duty is to go out and get enough food for all the inhabitants of the colony. In general, they look for for cellulose material, but in practice that could be your house, especially if it is constructed primarily of wood. Not that they will not eat their way through other materials too.

Plastic, soft metals like lead, and even concrete are no actual barrier to thousands of determined termites. But they would rather wood. Some species prefer dry timber and others would rather damp or rotting timber. However, do not think that you will necessarily see termite damage at a glance. Often termites will eat their way into the end grain of a piece of wood and then work their way up through the centre of it.

This section of the timber is the newest growth and, presumably, the most tender to a termite. Anyway, they will eat into the centre of, say, a floor joist, and make a walk-way or gallery through it to the next length of timber. So you may not realize that you have termites until they have so undermined your floor that you drop into the basement one day.

This is why, if you live in an area where termites are known to be vigorous, you should have your house inspected or sprayed at least once a year. Just because you have not observed a termite or any termite damage, does not mean that you have not got termites. Not by a long chalk.

There are three major kinds of termite: the damp timber termite, the dry wood termite and the subterranean termite. As you can see, no matter what state the timber in your house is in, there is a termite that will eat it. By far the worst of these is the subterranean termite and by far the nastiest of those is the Formosan termite. Do not make the error of thinking that you are secure from the Formosan termite because you do not live in China. They are all over Asia and in North America too.

Subterranean termites, living underground, are obviously much more difficult to spot. Not only that, they are either very clever or very shy, because they build walk-ways or tubes of earth from the exits from their underground nests to the nearest bit of timber. This helps them go unnoticed, unless you know what you are looking for, and then, when they have reached timber, they will burrow into the end grain and they are off, eating their way into the very structure of your house.

Within no time at all all the timber support beams, purlins, rafters and joists could be hollow shells of timber. One serious gust of wind or a heavy snowfall and that might be the straw that broke the camel’s back.