Termites cost American homeowners billions of dollars in damage every year — and most of it isn't covered by homeowners insurance, because it's classified as preventable. The trouble is that subterranean termites, the species we deal with most in Hampton Roads, do almost all of their damage where nobody's looking: inside wall cavities, under subfloors, behind the drywall.
Here are the five signs our inspectors look for on every visit, roughly in the order they tend to show up.
1. Mud tubes along the foundation
Subterranean termites need moisture to survive outside the soil, so they build pencil-width mud tubes to travel between the ground and their food source. Look along the foundation, crawl space piers, and any wood-to-soil contact points. A dry, abandoned-looking tube doesn't mean the colony is gone — it may have just found a new route.
2. Wood that sounds hollow or papery
Termites eat wood from the inside, following the grain and leaving a thin veneer of paint or wood on the surface. Tap on baseboards, door frames, and structural framing in the crawl space. A dull, hollow, or "papery" sound instead of a solid knock is a strong indicator.
3. Discarded wings near windows and doors
Once a colony matures, it sends out swarmers — winged reproductive termites — to start new colonies nearby. After swarming, they shed their wings almost immediately. A small pile of uniform, translucent wings on a windowsill or doorframe, especially in spring, is one of the clearest signs of an active infestation close by.
4. Tight-fitting doors and windows
As termites hollow out wood, moisture and tunneling can cause subtle warping. Doors and windows that suddenly stick or bind — with no obvious change in humidity or hardware — are worth a closer look, especially alongside any of the other signs above.
5. Frass that looks like tiny wood-colored pellets
This one is more common with drywood termites than the subterranean species, but it still shows up in older Hampton Roads homes. Drywood termites push their droppings — frass — out of small "kick-out" holes, leaving tiny, ridged pellets that look like coarse sawdust or ground pepper below the exit point.
"Most of the homes we catch early aren't because the homeowner saw termites — they saw one of these five things and called before it became a structural repair."
None of these signs on their own are proof of an active infestation, and none of them mean you need to panic. But if you're seeing more than one, it's worth having a licensed inspector take a look before repairs get more involved than a spot treatment.
