[Termite Control] Calculate It Correctly

Kevin Kordek, past president of the Virginia Pest Management Association, and current secretary of the National Pest Management Association, like many of his fellow PCOs, is committed to educating the pest control industry, as well as the consuming public, about the proper application of termiticides. Kordek gave a presentation on that subject — “Pre-treat Calculations the Right Way” — during NPMA PestWorld 2007, held in Orlando, in October.

“Pest control companies in most states, including Virginia, have had serious problems with improperly calculated termiticide pre-treats,” said Kordek, president of A-Active Termite and Pest Control, Virginia Beach, Va. “It seems that several things cause these incorrect applications: inadequate training of applicators and/or misinterpretation of termiticide labels. We don’t think that fraud was involved, although that was one of the things originally suspected. Whatever the reason, incorrect application obviously means possible termite infestation and therefore criticism of the homebuilder in question by the home buyer. It was apparent that this situation needed to be corrected.”

TREATING BY THE LABEL. All pre-treat applications are specified by manufacturers’ label instructions, Kordek told attendees. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency clarified those requirements about 12 years ago. Termiticides, according to the agency, are required to be applied at the full-label concentration rate and full-label volume under normal pre-treat circumstances, which generally include a site being visited a minimum of two times to treat the completed construction elements. But, many pest management professionals weren’t making these applications per label directions, said Kordek.

About three years ago, the Virginia Pest Control Board (VPCB), according to Kordek, stated that the proper use of liquid termiticides would be a priority for the state’s Office of Pesticide Services (OPS). The OPS is the enforcement branch of the board and monitors termiticide applications throughout Virginia. It stringently addresses cases of noncompliance.

“The OPS continues to concentrate on enforcement, and is targeting pest control companies that provide bids to contractors for pre-treats at below the known cost of termiticides, as well as companies that had previous violations of pre-treat applications.

“Our state’s department of agriculture created a pre-treat task force to educate home builders, pest control professionals and related industries,” he said. The task force included members of the pest control, building and real estate industries, along with representatives of the Virginia Pest Control Board, the OPS and the Office of Consumer Affairs. Kordek, who chaired the VPMA Wood-Destroying Insects Committee for eight years and has been an active member in the association’s pre-treat certification training course, was asked to serve on the task force.

“A study by the task force indicated that pest control companies by and large couldn’t adequately do the math involved in calculating how much termiticide is needed to do an effective pre-treat job,” he said.

A LITTLE MATH. To teach this, the VPCB granted funds to the VPMA to partner with OPS in providing a program of educational information on the correct way to make the pre-treat calculations.

Kordek explained that the workshop is not about how much to charge for a pre-treat. “It’s about how to figure out what it will actually cost a pest control company to do the job. This is very important.”

In the first workshop, less than 25 percent of the participants knew how to do this correctly, he said, even though the participants were experienced owners, managers and technicians. “The majority didn’t know how to calculate area. We found that to be alarming and several of us sat down and extensively revised the workshop content before the next session was started.”

The correct volume of termiticide to be applied is based on the size of the structure and the area that is to be treated. Using basic math, pest management professionals must calculate the appropriate linear footage (the actual length of an object) and square footage of a structure to be treated. They then convert that figure into the proper amount of gallons of product to be used.

Area is found by multiplying the length of the site to be pre-treated by its width, Kordek explained. Linear footage refers to the dimensions around the exterior of a building’s foundation as well as other areas to be vertically treated such as piers, porches, plumbing and electrical penetrations, etc.

“It’s important to learn the area under slab structures because this is to be a surface application and one of the things specified in a termiticide label is to treat at 1 gallon per 10 square feet. That’s an important measurement,” Kordek said.

He gave an example of treating around the outside of the foundation and around the piers. “This is where linear footage is important because if you don’t know that dimension, you can’t figure out how many gallons of chemical it will take to effectively do the job,” he said.

Kordek said that termiticide labels all specify that when creating a vertical barrier, the barrier must be established to the top of the footer, or a maximum depth of 4 feet. According to the label, 4 gallons for 10 linear feet per foot of depth is required, Kordek said. “So a barrier atop a footer that’s 1 foot deep is going to be dramatically different than one that’s 4 feet deep.”

Kordek calculated the above scenario in this manner: “The length of a foundation is 180 linear feet. Remember, we came up with 4 gallons per linear feet per foot of depth. To figure it out, take 180, divide by 10 and multiply by four. That’s right off the label. That gives you 72 gallons needed to create the vertical barrier.” And that is just one portion of the total pre-treatment.

“You’ll also need to treat 18 piers at about 2 gallons per pier. That’s 36 additional gallons. So just to treat the interior vertical barrier by digging a trench and ground-rodding and then trenching and rodding around the piers (on that first trip) that portion of the treatment will require at least 108 gallons of termiticide,” just for the vertical barrier, he said. In this example, the house required a full 270 gallons of termiticide dilution to complete the pre-treatment in accordance with the label instructions.

CONCLUSION. Kordek said that the task force, in conjunction with Virginia Tech, created a training manual that gives specific calculation examples for performing label-compliant pre-treats. He urged termite control applicators to carefully study the proper way to calculate termiticide pre-treat applications. “If members of our industry don’t,” he said, “there can be serious repercussions.”

The author is a freelance writer from Milwaukee, Wis.

For more information

To learn more about Kordek’s pre-treatment task force, visit the Virginia Pest Management Association’s Web site at www.vpmaonline.com.