Fumigation in Gilroy, CA

Local Context

Downtown Gilroy's Century-Old Framing Is What Still Puts a Tent Over a House

Fumigation answers a distribution problem, not a severity contest. Western drywood termites (Incisitermes minor) live entirely inside the wood, and one structure can hold several separate colonies that never touch each other. When galleries turn up in the attic framing, an eave, and a window header on three different sides of the same house, treating each one individually leaves whatever nobody could see. Gas reaches every void in the structure at once.

In Gilroy that pattern shows up most in the old core. Downtown grew up along Monterey Street in the era that produced Old City Hall, whose cornerstone was laid in November 1905, and the Victorian and Craftsman houses behind those blocks were framed in old-growth redwood and fir, then remodeled again and again. Furred walls, added porches, boxed eaves: every layer buried framing the next owner could not see, and concealed framing is where drywood colonies work for years without a sign. The stucco houses from the 1920s and 1930s hide it just as well behind their tile roofs and enclosed rafter tails.

The newer city rarely needs a tent. Homes in Glen Loma Ranch, Eagle Ridge, and the 1980s tracts are far more often dealing with subterranean termites coming from the soil, and fumigation does not touch a colony living in the ground. Which insect you have is the whole decision, and it comes out of the inspection.