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Charlie: Craig writes, “I have some termite damage on a section of my home. Would it be a good idea to replace the bad 2×4 wood with pressure treated lumber to avoid future termite damage?”
Tom: I don’t think it’s going to prevent termite damage. Termites don’t eat pressure treated lumber, this is true, but that doesn’t mean the termites, if there’s a problem, is going right back to that same piece of wood, saying, “Hey, what happened to our piece of
wood?” There’s lots of wood in the walls, there’s a lot of different tables around the foundation of your house.
If you want to replace it with pressure treated or regular, it’s fine. The most important thing is you find out why the termites were there, you take care of the termite problem so they don’t come back. Usually it’s because of a moisture problem, and somebody
just ignored the problem that was there for a while, so the termites had a long time to get in there. No more moisture problems, make sure you do your termite inspections every year, and you shouldn’t have any problems, if you want to use pressure treated,
you can, but you don’t have to. It’s not going to avoid any more termite problems if they’re still there.