Fumigation in King City, CA

Local Context

In King City the First Fumigation Question Is Which Termite You Actually Have

King City's dominant termite is subterranean (Reticulitermes spp.), driven by a concentrated winter wet season and soil contact around slab-on-grade tract homes. Fumigation does not treat that species. Vikane fills the structure and kills what is living inside the wood. It does nothing to a colony living in the soil beneath the slab, which comes right back up the same path afterward. So the species identification comes before the tent conversation, every time.

When fumigation is the right call here, it is drywood termites (Incisitermes minor) in exposed, sun-worked wood: the older buildings around Broadway Street downtown, patio covers and fascia baked through King City summers, and unpainted lumber in ranch outbuildings. Long dry heat checks and splits that wood, and a checked surface is exactly the opening a drywood swarmer needs. Once we find frass at three or four separate points in a structure, we are no longer looking at one gallery system we can drill and inject.

Structure type decides the rest. A detached single-story house on a normal King City lot tents cleanly. Attached units, shared-wall stucco apartment buildings, and the mixed-use storefronts downtown with living space above are a different job, because everything under the tarp has to be sealed and vacated together.