Fumigation in Saratoga, CA

Local Context

Clay Tile, Mature Canopy and a Hillside Driveway Decide What Tenting a Saratoga House Involves

Fumigation is a coverage decision, not a severity contest. A drywood colony (Incisitermes minor) lives entirely inside a wood member, so a spot treatment only works when every gallery can be reached. Saratoga houses often make that impossible. The 1960s and 1970s custom builds here are large and complicated — multiple rooflines, cathedral framing, additions layered onto the original footprint — and once activity shows in three separated areas, a tent is the only thing that reaches all of it at once.

Then the property sets the logistics. Spanish and Mediterranean revival houses in Saratoga carry clay tile roofs that tarps have to be laid over with care. Estate lots on the Congress Springs and Montalvo slopes have long, narrow driveways and grade changes that decide where a crew can stage. And nearly every mature Saratoga lot has canopy — the same orchard-era fruit trees and old oaks — leaning over the roof where the tarp needs to seal.

The city tree rules are part of that conversation. Saratoga protects a wide range of trees by ordinance, and removing one usually means a city permit, so limb work over a roof gets planned rather than improvised. Most of the time a tent needs branches trimmed back off the roof plane rather than a tree taken out, and we plan the tenting around the trees instead of the other way around.