We need to get our house tented for Termites and need advice on preparing

[Billy305]

Hello everyone, we bought our house about 2 years ago and when we had a new roof put on this last year we found traces of termites and need to get our house tented. For normal people this wouldn't be a HUGE ordeal, but for us having 40+ snakes, dogs, a monitor, and breeding our own rats in our garage, it becomes a big thing. The normal stuff like the dogs are easy but we have concerns about the other animals and how to handle the situation. We have found pros and cons to each and ill break them down and see what kind of advice we can get.

1. Ball pythons - We have 4 racks full of snakes. 2 of the racks are made of melamine and 2 of them pvc. We also have a cooler-converted incubator. We have every size from full size breeding females to juvis from last years breeding. One option would to be to rent a u-haul and move the racks with snakes in them 2 my parents house 5 minutes down the road, leaving the melamine/wood racks inside to make sure they have no termites. The other option is to leave ALL the racks and transport all the snakes in separate bags to my parents house and leave them there for a few days and move them back right away. after the tenting. I would still need to buy all the bags and the snakes would have no heat for a couple days. A few of the snakes are also possible gravid. I'm leaning towards u hauling the pvc racks and keeping mostly everything in there.

2. Savannah monitor cage - My friend is going to keep the lizard at his house in a small cage until the tenting is over. The monitor's normal enclosure is 7 feet long and will be left in the house. I haven't finished setting it up yet but its half way filled with dirt. My plan is as I don't want to contaminate the dirt is to get a bunch of buckets from home depot and shovel it all in there and then leave it outside away from the house during the tenting. After the tenting I would then wipe down the enclosure and put the dirt back in. I don't think this part should be too hard, but asking if it seems like a sound plan.

3. Rat rack. I have a 3 racks the are 6 tubs high each and then a huge 40 tub mother rack. They are very large. My plan was to take them both, rats still inside to my parents also during the tenting. This seems like the easiest way if I have help moving them, especially since I want to keep my breeding colonies. The con with this plan is again that they are made out of wood and I wont want them to have any termites in them. The other option is to get rid of most of the rats and then keep the females at my friends house to restart my colony. If I kept the racks in the garage then I would have to remove all of the water lines (not a big deal). One of my friends is saying that this may contaminate the wood and if the rats chew on it, they may get sick and in turn get my snakes sick. ( I have never really noticed any of the rats chewing on my racks.)

I would love to hear any advice. Keep in mind anything left in the house I would obviously clean really well, and anything I take out of the house thats made of wood could POSSIBLY have termites survive. (I haven't really seen any traces of termites in my racks.)

[Morris Reese]

I just had mine done and they assured me there would be no problems with pets inside or out. My termite guy turned out to be a "snake guy" also!!
All of the treatment was on the exterior and under the crawl space. It's been 3 months and all of my pets ( 2 dogs, 3 snakes are still alive and well!
Find you a termite company with good ratings and explain your situation to them.

[DVirginiana]

On the extreme end, I keep a lot of invertebrates, and the recommendation for keeping them out when a house/apartment is bug-bombed is 3-4 weeks since they are basically identical to the stuff it's designed to kill. Probably wouldn't need to keep your reptiles and rats out quite that long, but that's the general timeframe I've heard for any sort of gas to be pretty much completely gone from the environment.

EDIT: Again, I doubt the reptiles would be nearly as sensitive as inverts are, but a lot of people will get disposable latex gloves to handle/do maintenance for inverts for awhile after something like that, because of residue left on various items.

[C2tcardin]

Can't offer any help in regards to the whole process but good luck with everything, I'll be keeping an eye on this to see the outcome.

[Billy305]

I just had mine done and they assured me there would be no problems with pets inside or out. My termite guy turned out to be a "snake guy" also!!
All of the treatment was on the exterior and under the crawl space. It's been 3 months and all of my pets ( 2 dogs, 3 snakes are still alive and well!
Find you a termite company with good ratings and explain your situation to them.

They are going to cover the entire house with a tent and pump gas in to the entire thing. Anything left inside will be killed. My main dilema is anything wooden I take out not getting treated and anything left in side getting contaminated.

However to give some kind of reference they said the type of gas is meant to suffocate. Anything food wise of mine that Isn't in a sealed can has to be removed from the house. But they said items like plates can be eaten off of after the gassing and do not be removed. I'm not worried about a snake eating a part of the rack but I can see how a rat could nibble on the wood. I just don't know if it would really soak in.