Carpenter Ants

Not termites, and not regular ants

Termites eat wood. Carpenter ants don’t — they chew it out to make room to live in, and push the shavings out as they go. Those little piles of what looks like sawdust under a window frame or along a baseboard are the tell. It’s coarser than termite frass and often has bits of insect in it.

They matter for a different reason than termites do. Carpenter ants almost always move into wood that’s already been softened by water, so finding them means you probably have a leak, a bad seal, or ground contact somewhere. Killing the ants and ignoring the moisture just resets the clock.

Where they turn up around here

Window and door frames that have taken years of weather. Decks and porch posts. Around roof leaks and chimney flashing. Sill plates on older pier-and-beam houses. Outside, the parent colony is often in a stump, a dead limb or a woodpile within a hundred feet of the house, with satellite nests working indoors.

Why spraying the trail doesn’t fix it

The ants you see crossing a counter are a fraction of the colony, and killing them does nothing to the nest. Worse, some contact sprays cause a colony to split and scatter, which turns one problem into several. The work is identifying where they’re actually living and treating that, which takes a little longer up front and holds.

What we’ll tell you

If we find the moisture source, we’ll say so plainly — including when it’s a repair job rather than a pest job. You’d rather hear that from us than find out next spring.