What Chemicals Kill Termites?

Do you hear strange clicking sounds in the silence of night like a Morse code for the dead? Do you wake up to small but strange heaps of powder on the floor near the walls? Have you been peeling off brown brittle mud tubes, the width of a pencil point, from your walls? Are you a person of science but such instances are making you question your faith in everything? Does your house feel unexplainably empty, hollow to you somehow? Now, wait, before you speed-dial an exorcist. Chances are, your home is infested with termites. Termites are that sort of house ghosts-cum-guests, who feed on your precious things without ever giving anything back.

They live in your home without paying rent, they eat your furniture without paying for damages, they eat your documents without dealing with the consequences, they eat away anything solid in your life bit by bit without you even realizing it and before you know it, your place is just a hollow outline of what it used to be. Now before you spiral into an existential life crisis, there is always hope or rather there is always an anti-termite chemical. Use these termite control chemicals to snuff them out of your life, they should work like holy water works on spooky spirits.

Top 5 Chemicals For Controlling Termites

1. Chlorpyrifos 20% EC
2. Lindane 20% EC
3. Imidacloprid 30.5% SC
4. Boric Acid
5. Orange Oil

1. Chlorpyrifos 20% EC

This multitalented insecticide controls all sucking, biting, chewing and soil pests along with termites. This is used as a liquid termite repellent. Appropriate to its name, Chlorpyrifos 20% EC has to be used in 1:19 proportion wherein one litre of it is mixed with 19 litres of water to create the required solution. But don’t worry chlorpyrifos for termites shouldn’t cause you any harm. However, termites are annoyingly smart and have said to evolved. They have even managed to find their way around such repellent chemicals.

2. Lindane 20% EC

Here too, a litre of Lindane 20% EC is mixed with 19 litres of water. But do remember, that this is a liquid termiticide that acts as a repellent, which means, it can repel termites and hence may not be as effective as you want it to be. It is used for the control of sucking and chewing insects on a wide range of fibre and cellulose-based products like your furniture, floor or official documents.

3. Imidacloprid 30.5% SC

Here, 10.5 ml of this chemical is mixed with 5 litres of water and what’s better with this solution is that it is an anti-repellent, which is not detectable by termites. It’s a smart insecticide which attacks systematically the central nervous system of those wood-eaters. Because imidacloprid binds much more strongly to the termite’s neuron receptors than to mammals, this insecticide is more toxic to termites than to humans. It has low to medium toxicity to humans, so no worries.

4. Boric Acid

Boric Acid is a mineral that is very much poisonous termite treatment chemicals. But it is a safer option than other chemical therapies because it is less poisonous to people and other creatures.

5. Orange Oil

Orange oil is made from orange peel. It is poisonous to termites when they consumed it. In comparison to other anti termite treatment chemicals, it is comparatively a safe option for humans and other mammals.

However, using any of these three chemicals is like getting 50% of the work done. It’s always better to get a pest control professional to come and check in case your house has been possessed of these sneaky, wood-eating ghosts.

The Reason Why Termites Can Still Survive

Generally, when you spray or apply an effective chemical that is toxic to termites, it is natural for them to die. But unfortunately, there is more to this than the dead termites that meet the eye. The termite colony or as you might call it, the nest, is generally not in your house. It is usually somewhere in a damp, dark corner of the house or at the ground storey or at the ground level.

So, essentially, what you are killing are the visitors who had come to feast in your home. Also, there may be several unhatched eggs that might be left alive. Plus, there are literally thousands of termites waiting to climb above and start the process all over again. That’s why you need chemicals to kill the termites that are there in your home along with certain other physical measures and inspection to destroy the colony and prevent new termites from entering. Hence, it is advisable to rely on termite pest control experts along with the chemicals to get rid of termites for once and for all.