Carpenter ants

80% of the deck is a composite like trex. A friend recognized it as one of the original Weyerhouser products. She said she had never seen this old version installed after this long. She was interested in how it was holding up. I can tell her it held up well with all the neglect this house has had over the years.

I have been dismantling the nasty broken hot tub. I thought if I removed the surround It might be light enough to lift off the deck. Using a crow bar and a hammer, removing one panel at a time, slowly the Styrofoam insulation is being exposed. It is even uglier without the rotting siding. I had fun using the crow bar to snap pipes and rip off trim.

As the interior guts were exposed so were thousands of carpenter ants. A thriving monster colony had been living in the Styrofoam. Tunnels with hurrying black ants were exposed over and over again as the siding melted off the hot tub. On the far side, away from the heat of the sun was the most extensive invasion. I could smell the formaldehyde odor that the nest released into the air upon exposure. The nest had been there a long time.

I had waited until the cool of the evening to tackle the hot tub. It got dark before I completely finished. Tomorrow, I will smash away some more, even more motivated to get the monster off my deck. At the party the men said to just saw it up. After the siding is removed, I may just do that if it is still too heavy to move. It is a nasty piece of work.

I am now thinking exterminator for the house just to be safe. Under the deck, there are some insulated walls where the siding has been removed and foam siding is installed with no top finish material. This is often done on concrete foundation to help insulate. This particular area is pretty high up on the house . I am thinking that the carpenter ants had been at work and that was the repair job. I am happy to find the source of the ants we would see on the deck. Now we can make some progress.

Tom bought some insecticide. I think after the hot tub is gone, a good dose of spray will be in order. When we lived in the country in new construction, I did go around the foundation spraying for bugs. The construction materials would sit outside while the house was being built. The bugs that crawled into the wood piles would come out of the walls into the lovely new warm environment once everything was finished. I would spray the foundation every summer to discourage small crawly visitors.

This house will need that same kind of love for a while. The damage is limited to the damp area under the deck where the sun doesn't reach well. As Tom likes to say "Chemicals are our friends.", lets kill the bugs.