Termites!

[Farrell]

> The house where your piano is needs to be
> treated and that will take care of the ones in the piano.

Hmmmmm. I dunno. The piano was in the second floor lobby at Moffitt Cancer
Center in Tampa. Would the treatment hurt the patients? I guess there is a
lot of chemo-therapy going on anyway.  :-(

Actually, I very strongly suspect the damage is old damage. And there were
certainly no tubes/conduit for the little buggers to go from the ground to
the piano. The piano was donated some years ago to the hospital, I suspect
the troubles originated at its former home, AND hopefully ended there also.
I'm going to have to read about termites. Your info is very interesting.
I'll dig deeper on this. Speaking of digging deeper, I found a eaten-out
channel in the belly rail this morning :-(

Thanks for the input.

Terry Farrell
Piano Tuning & Service
Tampa, Florida
mfarrel2@tampabay.rr.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Christopher D. Purdy" <purdy@oak.cats.ohiou.edu>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Sunday, February 04, 2001 11:10 PM
Subject: Re: Termites!


> >Has anyone used any pesticide to tent and gas a piano for termites?
Brand?
> >Where to purchase? Effectiveness? Thanks. Anyone know how to tell if
termite
> >damage is old, or whether the termites might still be active (besides
> >waiting a year or two to see if the piano weighs less)? Thanks again.
> >
> >Terry Farrell
> >Piano Tuning & Service
> >Tampa, Florida
> >mfarrel2@tampabay.rr.com
>
> Terry,
>
> Termites build mud tubes up from the ground to the wood.  If termites are
> active there will be mud tubes about the size of a pencil going to the
> piano.  They would be under the piano and maybe hard to see but they have
> to be there or it is old damage.  If you see these tubes, break them open
> and if you see little white bugs, that's your boys.  If you move the
piano,
> the termites cannot "go home" and it is my understanding that they cannot
> live without that access to the ground.
>
> I have never had to deal with termites in a piano but my father owned a
> pest control business and when I was young I spent summers at war with
> termites.  When a house was treated for termites back then, they didn't
> really kill all the bugs.  They live and travel underground and you can't
> get to them.  What you do is put a chemical barrier between them and the
> house so they can't come up.  The house where your piano is needs to be
> treated and that will take care of the ones in the piano.  They can't
> survive without going back underground.  Chances are they are in other
> parts of the house and the piano may be the least of the owners concerns.
> Also, don't sweat the eggs.  The queen lives underground and lays all the
> eggs there.
>
> Things have changed alot since I did this kind of work.  I belive the
> chemical we used then isn't even legal to use now.  What I have seen
> recently is where people put little "bait" traps at about 3-6 foot
> intervals in the ground around the house.  The workers get the bait and
> take it back to the nest underground where it slowly poisons the whole hee
> haw gang.
>
> chris
>
> -Christopher D. Purdy R.P.T.
> -School of Music, Ohio University
> -Athens, OH  45701
> -mailto:purdy@ohio.edu
> -(740) 593-1656 office
> -(740) 593-1429 fax
>
>
>