High-quality hardwood flooring is beautiful, hard-wearing, and can be found in millions of homes and commercial buildings across Australia and around the world. Unfortunately, while hardwood flooring is tough, it can be vulnerable to damage caused by certain types of wood-boring insects.
In Australia, the common furniture beetle is a common cause of hardwood flooring damage. These voracious beetles can leave hardwood flooring riddled with holes in an alarmingly short amount of time. If you suspect common furniture beetles are damaging your hardwood flooring, you should call in a professional pest control service to eliminate the infestation as soon as possible.
How Can You Detect Common Furniture Beetle Infestations In Hardwood Flooring?
The common furniture beetle is a small, innocuous brown beetle, and can be very hard to distinguish from harmless beetle species. Fortunately, these adult beetles aren't what you need to watch out for, as they do not consume wood. Common furniture beetle larvae, sometimes known as woodworm, are responsible for damaging hardwood flooring, as well as other timber fittings and furniture.
These tiny larvae spend most of their time buried deep within the wooden items they are currently consuming, so you are unlikely to spot the larvae themselves. Instead, look for clusters of small holes left behind by the larvae's burrowing habits. You may also tiny piles of 'frass' near the holes. This sawdust-like substance is actually woodworm droppings.
If common furniture beetle larvae have infested your hardwood flooring for some time, some boards may be badly damaged. If a floorboard starts to visibly crack and crumble or feels soft and spongy underfoot, it may be harbouring hundreds of beetle larvae. Badly damaged sections of flooring will almost certainly need to be replaced.
It is also worth remembering that common furniture beetle larvae cannot consume wood unless it contains significant amounts of moisture. Since hardwood flooring is treated with waterproof sealants, it will only be vulnerable to an infestation when these sealants are damaged or worn away. Look for signs of infestation in high-traffic areas where sealants may be damaged, or in floorboards that have suffered from damp or water damage.
How Can You Remove Common Furniture Beetle Infestations In Hardwood Flooring?
You may have noticed over-the-counter products designed to kill common furniture beetles in hardware and home improvement stores. Unfortunately, these are generally only effective against the harmless, adult beetles, and will do little or nothing to remove the larvae doing all the damage.
For this reason, you should skip the DIY methods and call in a professional pest control service to handle the woodworm damaging your floorboards. These services have access to specialised, commercial-grade chemicals and solutions for killing common furniture beetles, and the experience needed to deploy them to the best effect.
If woodworm has only damaged a relatively small section of your flooring, it may be possible to nip the infestation in the bud by removing and destroying the affected floorboards. Your pest control service will tell you which floorboards are infested and need to be removed, and apply powerful insecticidal chemicals to the infestation area to kill any outlying larvae.
If woodworm has infested large sections of flooring, whole-room or whole-house fumigation may become necessary. This is a more disruptive and expensive process but is guaranteed to completely destroy any infestations in your home. As a bonus, fumigation will also kill other harmful insects that may be lurking on your property and will destroy woodworm that has moved to other timber products, such as bookcases or dining chairs.
For more information on pest control, contact a company near you.
Share9 September 2022
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