You must log in or register to comment.
If someone termited my house I’d bed bug theirs. You did nature damage but I did psychic damage that will reverberate for years.
Cockroaches or centipedes?
I’ve lived with all 3. Bed bugs are the worst.
Neither eat you alive while having you doubt your own sanity. The fact that you’re asking means you’ve clearly never had bed bugs. Be thankful for that.
It sounds like you just didn’t have enough cockroaches and/or centipedes. It’s a common mistake.
I’ve had both. You can’t even compare the two. Bed bugs really do have this way of getting in your head and completely destroying your sanity. I don’t know how they do it.
You’ll never be the same again after bed bugs. You’ll have to throughly check every hotel room you stay in for the rest of your life*, or you won’t be able to sleep. Forget about crashing at a friend’s place. Roaches can’t do that shit. They have their boundaries. Bed bugs don’t give a shit.
I feel like I’m not adequately explaining just how awful it is to have them. You’ll never understand unless it happens to you.
So just for fun…
Termites species vary widely in their eating speed. A rough average seems to be 0.5kg a year for a colony.
If it’s an old house made of wood, because I think it’s the only kind where this is theoretically viable, say it would contain roughly 20,000 kg.
That’s going to take the colont 40,000 years. But that also means it could theoretically take 40,000 colonies 1 year.
Termite colonies that consume closest to 0.5kg/year are dry wood termites, which can have up to a few thousand individuals. Let’s say 2000. In theory you would only need 80 million of them.
The average termite volume is roughly 12 cubic millimeters, and and the average car has roughly 3 billion cubic millimeters. This means you could fit ~230 million termites. This is almost 4x as much as you need, but 1 year is kind of long.
In theory you could load up 3 cars full or termites and eat up someone’s house in a month if you really wanted to.
You could use a more aggressive species but really, they are just in larger numbers so you get diminishing returns on vehicle space. Either way you’re going to need a lot more than 9000 termites
Edit: this would also produce a about 3 metric tons of termite poop if we estimate 15% of it comes out as poop.
Thank you for doing the maths on this one. It sounds like a single car load of termites could finish off a house in a little over 3 months. If we allow space for the driver, we’d be at around 4 months. Definitely long enough to really rub it in, and we wouldn’t nedd the entire house eaten, just the structural bits.
Now, do you happen to know where I can hire a car full of termites? Asking for a ‘friend’…
Realistically if it’s a responsible homeowner just a handful of termites every couple weeks would be enough to cause them financial harm. Depending on your state it could be as little as 400 bucks to treat a small area of termites. If the homeowner is on top of it and treats whenever they see them that’s 400 bucks every couple weeks pissed away, and it can be significantly more to repair the wood if you don’t want pin hole riddled fascia all over the place.
But how would you get all the termites to remain in the house instead of wandering off somewhere else?
Training. Lots of training. That’s why I, I mean my friend, wants to hire them, I’ve no idea how you do that.
I’m on a cement slab. Good luck getting termites to eat that.
Wouldn’t they just eat your wall studs instead?
Brick, concrete and steel studs here. Why would anyone build anything from wood?
To flex during earthquakes.
Lol ok. That’s a myth.
Lol ok. It isn’t.
Earthquakes happen all around the world, yet no one builds wooden houses for centuries.
My house is less than a hundred years old and is made from old growth redwood.
Yeah your floor might be fine but goodbye walls.
Shoutout to brick walls. Hopefully our ceilings can handle the falling roof tiles, though
Brick walls still have lumber for studs and joists.
Brick veneers do
People have killed themselves over bedbug infestations. They are no joke. And yet… somehow I get it.
When your abandoned warehouse hideout is about to be condemned because Slippery Derek keeps showing up late at night with some batteries and a super soaker filled with acetic acid to speed up metal corrosion (or lye water for aluminium).
That’s truly terrible. Haha
I think the definition of arson should be expanded
Almost every home I’ve seen in Central Florida is either all cement, or the first floor is cement. Texas though…
Fun Fact: The original section of my house is made out of compressed cow shit. Apparently, making panels out of that used to be a thing.
Uh I live in central Florida. Cement foundation, 2x6 exterior walls, 2x4 interior. House was built in 2006 so it isn’t old. 4 of my 5 neighbors also are sick.
Only 1 is cement and that is only because during COVID - it was cheaper to concrete a home then stick build.
Weird. Maybe code varies by county?
There is no code requiring Concrete Bunkers for buildings.
Nope. The moment you rock out the kid-pidgin like ‘cuz u’ I know you’re not worth the time.
