Termites in Pecan - firewood question

[TeeMan]

Saturday three of us were splitting some rounds at my friend’s house from a large Pecan tree he took down and we ended up with 2 cords. We had a lot of pieces that were rotted in the center so were very brittle. We split off the “good” portions of the rounds and discarded the rotted pieces. But there were a lot of termites! They were all over some of the rounds that we split and discarded. We threw all the “infested” pieces into a large pile which was later burned that night after we finished splitting the good sections up and stacked them.

He has the firewood stacked on plastic pallets to season and dry out, so it is not in direct contact with the ground. I know termites have to have a queen and colony to survive and also thrive on rotting, damp wood. It was just un-settling to see so many termites in the rounds that we were splitting…I’ve never seen any in wood I’ve split until that point.

So...with the “good” pieces stacked off the ground and the “infested” pieces burned that same day, what are the chances he has to worry about further infestation in the woodpile or home risk? He is going to spray as well with some termite spray around his home and wood piles (not on the wood itself). We found quite a bit of the queens within the wood as we split as well.

:help:

 

[zogger]

Loose stacked, like criss cross, let it air out and dry fast, no termites. Any in there will abandon ship. Same with ants.

I have salvaged real bug infested wood like that, cut and split, let it sit, then knock them again, check for any that might still be there, then all the good pieces into a regular stack, no bugs. Sometimes they need resplitting smaller. Faster they dry, the quicker the bugs vamoose.

 

[TeeMan]

Loose stacked, like criss cross, let it air out and dry fast, no termites. Any in there will abandon ship. Same with ants.

I have salvaged real bug infested wood like that, cut and split, let it sit, then knock them again, check for any that might still be there, then all the good pieces into a regular stack, no bugs. Sometimes they need resplitting smaller. Faster they dry, the quicker the bugs vamoose.

We did the criss cross pattern mainly so that we could fit more squarely on the pallets and also split down the pieces pretty well. When we got to the nastier portions, I would knock them together before stacking just to be sure, but again there may have been some left in the pieces we thought looked to be the "good" ones; but like you stated, hopefully they abandon ship! I guess we did all the right things to this point to prevent any of those nasty things in the woodpile.

 

[sb47]

I would keep the stacks as far away from the house as possible, just in case.

 

[TeeMan]

I would keep the stacks as far away from the house as possible, just in case.

I agree. This is not at my house currently, but at my friend's house where we split (his tree that he cut down and 'paid' myself and another friend of ours labor in beer and lunch to split). He also sprayed on the ground around the stacks...they are not right on top of the house, but could be a bit further away looking back now.