Pre-Construction Termite Treatment - Protecting Your New Dallas-Fort Worth Home

If you're building a home, some cities such as Dallas and Grapevine, require a pre-construction termite treatment in order to receive your certificate of occupancy prior to moving in or selling the home to a homeowner.

If you're not in those cities, it's still a good idea to get it done even if it's not required. It's usually pretty simple and easy depending on the stage of construction you're in.

Three Types Of Pre-Construction Termite Treatments  

We won't dive deep into all the different types of treatments here, but there’s basically three options, available at various stages:

1. Stage 1: before the foundation is poured: once the construction site is laid out along with the plumbing but before the concrete foundation is poured, we have the option to do what we call a “full treatment”. This is basically when the pest control company comes in and treats 100% of the soil that will be underneath the foundation. This will be the most expensive version, but also the most effective
2. Stage 2: after the foundation is poured when the wood frame is up but no walls: at this stage, where you can see the wood framing of the house, is one of the most common stages to do a termite pre-treatment because it tends to be the easiest and most cost-effective. An average home should cost $300-600 for a treatment at this stage. The treatment is called a borate treatment. This is when you use a product such as Totality (manufactured by FMC) or Bora-Care (manufactured by Nisus) and spray it along the bottom ~2 feet of all wood framing along the house - interior and exterior walls.
3. Stage 3: after the walls are up and you can no longer see the wood framing - at this stage your only viable option is to do a traditional liquid treatment around the foundation or install a termite baiting system such as Sentricon. This will be one of the final steps as the final grade and landscaping need to be completed on the outside before the treatment is done.  So if the walls just went up and your GC just remembered about the termite pre-treat (happens ALL the time), don’t fret - there are still options. But you’ll have to wait weeks or months until the end of the process to get one of these done. These types of treatment tends to be more expensive typically than a borate treatment (stage 2) but less expensive or on par with a full treatment (stage 1)