Monday, November 25, 2013

Wooden houses need care

WELCOME TO OUR BLOG, IN ADDITION TO OUR OWN POSTS, WE WILL BE COLLECTING INFORMATION FROM ANY PUBLIC SOURCE, AND BY DOING SO, WE HOPE TO BE ABLE TO SUPPLY SOME USEFUL INFORMATION TO OUR READERS; WE ARE ALSO GOING TO HAVE SOME DO IT YOURSELF POSTS.
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Welcome to our blog, Menfranco general blog
and this post, Wooden houses need care
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Timber houses need to be painted, not only because they would look better, but because the paint protect the timber from rotting.






Wooden houses need more care
Timber houses maintenance
Just like most of us that have lived in brick and concrete houses would have thought; these wooden houses need more maintenance and care than the masonry houses.
So, for those people that have not own or lived in timber houses before they should ask some questions, before they get involved in owning one of these houses; perhaps the first question that would come to their mind is: are these houses safe to live in and how long these houses can last? And then, what sort of maintenance they require? You see, they have a right to know that, so let us try to explain this timber housing situation.
Timber houses need perhaps more maintenance that masonry houses; because first of all you need to paint them for the timber to last longer, otherwise the timber on the outside walls will slowly rot away, but then, there are also some advantages because, you see if you want to change something those alterations could be done easily and definitely a lot easier and cheaper than if you have a masonry house, therefore it could work well after all.
Having said that we need also to say that these wooden houses have some problems of their own, apart that they need to be painted for the external timber to last longer, they also have some vermin enemies everywhere in the houses, because the timber is more vermin friendly than masonry and bricks and cement, but the normal vermin are not a big problem for the house structure itself. 
One of the greatest enemies of these timber house must be the termite also called the white ants, as they can virtually eat the timer and your house would crumble down.   

The greatest enemy of these wooden houses are the termites, or white ants as some of us calls them; The white ants can really destroy entire buildings by eating the wood from the inside, a lot of times people don’t even know that the white ants are there eating their houses away while they are living in them; you see, unless you know what you are looking for it is hard to see any sign of them from the outside. So one day suddenly one can find out by toughing or putting some pressure on a spot where the white ants have eaten the wood from inside, and one can have a great shock to see this happen, as everything starts collapsing inward and where there was a wall now there is a big hole.
Therefore, it would be worthwhile to learn how to recognize the signs if there are white ants; and definitely call an expert to check the building if you are going to buy it.
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How to defend our homes from these pests
The white ant problem
How to defend our homes from these pests
The ants capping on this timber stump will stop crawling insect to enter your house, it will also stop the termite, because they cannot eat the capping. 




There are a few things that we can do to prevent this pest destroy our homes; the first thing that one has to do is to check that there is a barrier that stops the white ants to enter your building, for instance if your house is a high-set house on stumps, check that at the top of the stumps there is a metallic ant capping; this metallic ant capping is usually a large galvanized round dish or square of metal and it is bent down at the edges so that any crawling insect will find it difficult to enter your house that way; we hope you can see the picture? The ant capping prevents also the white ants to enter through the stump itself, if the stump has been infested with white ants, because when they reach the top of the stump they cannot eat through the metal capping and so they are stopped entering that way, of course there are a lot of different buildings and a lot of different ways to set a barrier.
Now there are ways that one can be looking if there are white ants; here what one has to keep in mind is that white ants eat everything from inside and they don’t like to be exposed outside for long, so, the first thing one can do is to tap on anything that is made of wood; if the wood sounds hollow then the white ants might have eaten the inside, so a complete check is needed to see what is the cause; another way to look for white ants signs is that if they are forced to go outside to move from one place to another, they will construct a tunnel, so that they can go up and down without being seen, so one has to look for these signs anywhere under the building: Now some expert has told me that what happens here is that the white ants need moisture, so they have to travel to the ground to get the moisture and then they go up again their tunnel to eat the timber; now if the building is solid and there is no other way for the ants to go up they will construct their tunnel from the ground up, so we should be looking for signs to see if there are ants tunnel constructed, and if there are tunnels, it means that there are white ants also, therefore you need a pest control expert to poison these pests, and you need him fast.  
What you can see in this photo is how the white ants come into the building without being seen, so one must look for these signs all around and under the building, to see if there are white ants. 

Some natural enemies of the white ants
White ants have very few enemies because they live and hide inside the timber, but there are some natural enemies of course in their natural habitat, a couple of which are pictured here. As I said before, one needs to learn the signs how to spot the white ants presence, and do something if you find that they are there, otherwise they could eat your house away.
Good luck to all houses owner! See you soon in another hub.

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Menfranco general blog 
Wooden houses need care
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