Fumigation in Cupertino, CA

Local Context

When Cupertino Drywood Colonies Outrun What a Drill-and-Treat Can Reach

Fumigation is a decision about distribution, not about severity. Western drywood termites (Incisitermes minor) start one gallery at a time, and a single infested fascia board is a spot-treatment job. But Cupertino's houses have been standing since the 1960s through the 1980s, and by the time a colony has worked undisturbed for decades it has usually thrown swarmers that started new galleries elsewhere in the same structure. When we find activity in the attic framing, the eaves and a window header on the same house, tenting is the only method that reaches all of it at once.

The Fairgrove tract compounds this. Its roughly 220 Eichlers went up in 1960 and 1961 in the southeast corner of the city, between Miller Avenue and Bollinger Road, and they carry their structural wood in the open: tongue-and-groove decking, exposed beams, wide fascia. That gives drywood swarmers many separate points of entry rather than one. On those houses and the ranch blocks of Rancho Rinconada beside them, weathered paint and stain on the west-facing elevations is where we usually see the kick-out holes.

Gas moves where a liquid cannot: inside a beam, behind trim, into the roof deck. That is the whole argument for tenting. It also leaves no residue on surfaces and no protection against the next colony, which is why we pair it with the repairs and the wood-exposure corrections listed on the report.