$369k to have this lady's problem down the road:
Termites: Home-wreckers have free rein
Mary Shanklin
of The Sentinel Staff
Published in The Orlando Sentinel on May 16, 1999.
Delaine Kansol used to lie awake in fear of the silent attack. The sight of termites in her home made her too panicky to sleep, too squeamish to eat, too afraid even to go through the door.
"I'd lay down and think, 'Are they going to come tonight?' " she said.
The predator most likely to invade your home, the subterranean termite, crawled into Kansol's two-story home in Orlando and ate $16,000 of its wood structure.
Almost every day for two weeks, termites emerged from the walls of her 8-year-old house. Their white-winged bodies coated the floors. They squirmed in her garden tub and excreted in her kitchen.
"We couldn't even eat in the house," she said.
She obsessed about what part of her home the creatures were destroying while she was at work.
After work, she picked up her 5-year-old son from day care and made him go inside the house first for a scouting report. She said she just couldn't face the wreckage cold.
Last year, contractors tore open the walls and exposed wood beams that were so thin that they crumpled like old paper.
"There was no wood left. I was bawling," said Kansol, an employee-benefits consultant. "There was nothing holding the walls up."
Kansol had done all the right things. She had a contract with a well-known pest-control company to treat her home annually for termites. She even got the best of contracts, the one that required the company to pay for termite damage.
But it was Kansol who had to eat the $16,000 it took to rebuild.
Each year, hundreds of thousands of Floridians share Kansol's nightmare. They bought houses built since 1988, when the federal government pulled killer termite poisons off the market because researchers suspected they contributed to health problems.
Those poisons -- chlordane, heptachlor, aldrin -- killed termites for 35 years. New chemicals only repel the insects and are effective for just five years.
"With today's chemicals, it's not a matter of if you get termites, it's when," said Roland Holt, the Building Department director in St. Johns County and an advocate for statewide termite-protection reforms.
How many houses are at risk? Computer research of property appraisal records by The Orlando Sentinel showed that one in every four of Central Florida's 499,102 houses was built in 1988 or later, making them easier targets for termites than older homes, which were protected by chlordane.
Experts at the University of Florida estimate that termites annually eat their way through $500 million worth of homes and businesses in Florida. And the devastation will likely only get worse: About 100,000 houses are built in Florida every year, often atop termite colonies.
"It's safe to say we [Floridians] have the worst termite problem in the United States," said entomologist Phil Koehler of the University of Florida.
The state has seen a 61 percent increase in consumer termite complaints since 1991. As many as two of every three houses built since 1988 in St. Johns County have been infested, a survey showed.
No one has studied damage in Central Florida. But Orlando is rated the fifth-most-infested city in the nation, with Miami in first place and Tampa in third, according to an annual report from Orkin Pest Control.
Kansol's repair bill of $16,000 is on the high end for damage estimates, according to the Sentinel's review of more than 500 consumers' complaints from the Orlando area. Damage usually ranges from about $2,000 to $10,000, with bathrooms being the hardest hit. Owners of concrete homes may think they're safe, but the insects destroy the wooden framework and roof system.
What are the rules?
As chemicals have gotten weaker, termites have gotten stronger. A voracious foreign termite called the Formosan is attacking parts of the state. After eating $2 billion worth of property in New Orleans in the past 10 years, Formosans have inundated south Florida, and now they've migrated to Orlando. With superior speed, ravenous appetites and immunity from common pesticides, Formosans make native subterranean species look like amateurs.
Struck by the bleak outlook for controlling termites, the construction industry, state regulators and pest-control operators have proposed a new statewide termite protection code. The code would require that foundations get a double dose of chemical prevention.
The Florida Building Commission this year approved the regulations, subject to public hearings. Two hearings are slated for Central Florida: Friday at the Melbourne Beach Hilton, 3003 N. Highway A1A, Indialantic and May 24 at the Doubletree Orlando Resorts and Conference Center, 3011 Maingate Lane, Kissimmee. The state Legislature is expected to approve them next year.
Orange and Lake counties, however, are not waiting for state action. In 1998, those counties passed tougher termite protection codes, requiring pretreatments under and around new house foundations. State officials seized upon the Orange and Lake codes, which were modeled on an even stronger one pioneered by St. Johns County.
"Absolutely, both Lake and St. Johns counties were looked at," said Toni Caithness, executive vice president of the Florida Pest Control Association In Orlando. "We tried to go county by county to strengthen these codes, and it became more realistic to change it for the whole state."
But the stronger codes are no guarantee that houses will be protected. Given today's weaker chemicals, often-sloppy applications and pest-control contracts that don't cover repairs, the codes will not solve Florida's termite problem.
And the code changes will do nothing for Kansol. After trying for two years, she managed to sell her two-story home in the Mystic Cove neighborhood of Orlando for $125,000, but she's still out the $16,000 for repairs. The company she hired to control pests, Sears Termite and Pest Control, has refused to pay for all the damage. The case is now headed to arbitration.
Kansol hired Sears when she purchased her house in 1996, paying $1,200 for the first treatment. She paid annual fees to have the house treated and even spent $300 to have a 6-inch swath of stucco cut away from the bottom of her home so that inspectors could see whether termites were tunneling inside.
Sears had guaranteed in writing it would pay for repairs, but the company offered to pick up only a third of the $16,000 damage bill. Later, the national company offered to cover half of the damage costs. Kansol rejected those offers, saying that Sears promised to pay for damage, and it should honor that agreement.
Sears Vice President Steve Gallagher said he could not address the specifics of the case but said his company pays for thousands of termite damage claims a year.
"We just have a difference of opinion about the level of our responsibility," he said.
Kansol and her new husband, Harvey, since have built a $477,000 house in the Tuscawilla development in Seminole County. Unfortunately, the new home could have similar problems.
That is because Florida's houses -- particularly the newest ones -- likely will continue to be plagued by termites. Here's why:
Wood construction scraps and tree roots are often buried under house sites. Termite colonies feed on the debris until the food supply is exhausted. Then they head to the next food source, which is often the house. The proposed state rule would prohibit wood debris within 15 feet of a house. Even though the rule would help reduce termite fodder, the insects can travel 10 times that distance in one day.
The chemicals used to pretreat house sites are termite repellants -- not insect-killing poisons. If pesticide applicators fail to soak the entire site, the termites simply avoid the treated areas and funnel through untreated crevices and gaps.
The pest-control industry has successfully fought regulations to ensure correct pretreatment of property. The industry has defeated efforts to add dyes to pretreatment chemicals.
Pest-control companies often fail to pay for termite damage even though they guaranteed they would make repairs for customers. Termite contracts are filled with restrictions, limitations and exemptions. For instance, most companies pay for termite damage only when live termites are found. The industry has resisted state efforts to standardize contracts.
Only one county in Florida requires pest-control companies to guarantee their work. The St. Johns County Termite Protection Code, enacted in 1996, requires that pest-control companies offer a termite repair bond when they pretreat a site.
Florida does require that all pest-control companies offer a bond after they pretreat a house lot. The bonds usually cost $75 to $250 a year and include annual termite inspections.
But the difference between the run-of-the-mill bonds and the bonds required in St. Johns County is that typical bonds only call for pest-control companies to spray more chemicals when termites are found; the bonds in St. Johns County call for the pest-control companies to pay for as much as $50,000 in repairs for termite damage.
Neither the proposed state code nor the new termite protection codes in Orange, Lake, Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties require pest-control companies to fix termite damage -- only to throw more chemicals at the insects.
Even though the number of consumer complaints against pest-control operators has increased from 348 in 1991 to 561 last year -- Florida has 3,493 licensed companies -- fewer operators are being disciplined. The state Bureau of Entomology, which polices the industry, sent 92 warning letters to licensed operators in 1992. Last year, the agency sent 29 such letters. In the past three years, no pest-control operator has lost his or her license. The number of fines, usually $1,000 to $2,000, has increased only from 27 in 1991 to 30 last year.
In Florida, it is legal to take a piece of wood infested with Formosan termites and plant it next to someone's home. Landscape timbers and railroad ties infested with Formosan termites are transported throughout the state. No state agency is charged with controlling termites. Meanwhile, the state Department of Agriculture spent $11 million last year on eradicating citrus-threatening Medflies. State law prohibits the transport of Medflies.
Other Southeastern states have minimum standards for termite treatments before and after homes are built. Florida, the most-infested state, has no such rules. Even the proposed state rule and the tougher codes in Orange and Lake counties do not address termite treatments after a house has been built. And Floridians' favorite housing material, stucco, serves as a hiding place where termites can tunnel and then gut a house's wood frame.
Before construction
The threat begins before a house is under construction.
Florida's warm, humid climate -- coupled with development in once-wooded areas -- increasingly pits homeowners against termites.
"People are building houses over termite territory," said Nan-Yao Su, a research entomologist for the University of Florida. "We're the ones invading their territory."
Kansol said she knew what was underneath the foundation of the 4,000-square-foot house she and her husband built in Tuscawilla. She said she pestered her builder about termite precautions.
"I was a termite freak," she said.
Orlando builder Joe Marklen said he hired Pestban Pest Control of Florida to pretreat the Kansols' house foundation and install pesticide tubes in the foundation and walls of the home. But those precautions are no guarantee, he said.
"Everybody in Florida is in danger to get termites," he said.
As developers and builders "invade" termite territory by constructing about 100,000 new houses in Florida a year, builders leave behind a termite food court. They drop such termite edibles as scrap building materials, landscape stakes and fast-food paper bags at the construction site. The law now requires construction workers to remove wood only from under the house site.
"It depends on the contractor," said David Beitz, Seminole County building official. "I can name you 10 who do it [remove the material] religiously and 80 who don't."
During construction
Given the prime breeding conditions in Florida's soil, the best defense against termites is a strong chemical offense. Pretreating a house site is the only way to prevent termites from invading the entire house.
Yet as crucial as pretreatments are, Florida does not require them. The state's building code reads: "Building officials may require soil treatment in areas where termite damage is known to be very heavy."
For about 40 years, the driving force behind pretreatments has been mortgage lenders: You can't get a loan to buy an existing house without first having it inspected for termites and making sure any damage is repaired, and you can't buy a new home without pretreating the site.
The proposed state code would require that new houses be protected with pretreatments. The pretreatments, though, are only as good as the chemicals used.
In the past decade, the chemical weaponry underneath homes has evolved from machine-gun strength to the slingshot approach. Chlordane, the effective chemical banned in 1988 by the EPA, was used to treat the foundations of about 30 million U.S. houses since 1948.
Since the killer chemicals came off the market, house foundations have been doused with pesticide brands such as Demon, Dragnet and Dursban. The repellants last about five years.
The majority of pest-control companies have had problems with pretreatments. In a 1994 survey by a legislative committee, seven out of 10 operators reported that their preconstruction treatments had failed.
Even if the chemicals worked, they are seldom applied correctly, Koehler said. Just ask Dennis Kearley and Gregory Highfill.
They recently learned from the Sentinel's research into state termite-enforcement files that their new, $132,000 house in Lake Underhill Pines in east Orange County was sitting on soil that had less termite treatment than a can of Raid. State regulators said they should have informed the homeowners.
Demetree Builders hired Freedom Pest Control to treat the soil on the lot that Kearley and Highfill bought. Freedom's employee Leroy Rodgers was supposed to spray 255 gallons of termiticide on the house site. Instead he sprayed 86 gallons.
He also watered down the chemical. For every 20 ounces of Dragnet FT Termiticide he was supposed to use, he used only 1 ounce, according to an investigation by the state Bureau of Entomology. The application violated federal law because it was inconsistent with label directions.
An undercover field inspector for the state Bureau of Entomology watched the application and later questioned Rodgers about it.
In November, the state fined Freedom $2,000 and required that the company give the homeowners free upgrades in termite protection, such as repairing any future damage or installing a termite bait system. In April, Highfill opted to have Freedom spray around the foundation.
Freedom owner Tom Jeffries said he was not at the site when Rodgers did the initial pretreatment and that any problems with his pretreatments have been resolved.
"As a business owner, your hands are tied. You can't be on the site with them [applicators] all the time," Jeffries said. "If that was his [Rodgers'] way of doing business, it's been straightened out."
He said Rodgers is still doing pretreatments but that he now has a better understanding about the need to follow label directions.
Watered-down pretreatments are nothing new. Cost-conscious builders typically hire the applicator who can do the job most cheaply.
"They take up the cheapest bid," Su said about builders. "And they [applicators] may have to cut down the chemicals and spray something very casually. That has been a chronic problem in the industry."
Pest-control companies have to spend 20 cents a square foot to cover a house site with chemicals. But they usually agree to do the job for 5 or 10 cents a square foot.
Jacksonville builder Ron Coppenbarger said his industry could pay greater attention to termite problems.
"In the past, I think we got complacent," said Coppenbarger, the former chairman of the termite committee for the Florida Home Builders Association. "You didn't have to worry about every little stick being in there because chlordane was in there. Well, today we don't have chlordane."
If termite pretreatments are the problem, why not add a dye to the pesticides to show whether the house site was completely covered? A committee of termite experts recommended to the Legislature in 1994 that the state require pest-control applicators to dye their pretreatments. The dye would have let applicators, builders and inspectors see the coverage. The committee also recommended applicators use flow meters to determine how much chemical they used.
The Florida Pest Control Association, which lobbies the state on proposed changes in the industry, successfully fought both measures.
The flow meters were expensive, costing $500 to $700, and they had to be recalibrated constantly, said Roger Lewis, owner of Lewis-Cobb Exterminating in Orlando and president-elect of the Florida Pest Control Association. He said applicators can easily determine how much chemical they use per square foot.
And the dyes, which colored the ground inside the foundation walls, left a mess.
"You get it on your hands, on the hose," Lewis said. "It's rather unsightly."
After construction
With so many ways for pretreatments to go wrong, it's little wonder that Florida's homes have been besieged by termites. Extrapolating from lawsuits, the University of Florida has figured Florida homes and buildings receive $500 million in damage each year.
And property owners swallow those costs. Homeowners' insurance policies ignore termite repairs because the damage occurs over time and isn't tied to a calamity.
But even if pest-control companies promise to cover damage, their customers' contracts are laced with holes.
Companies refuse to pay for damage that predates the contract, damage that is near leaks that were not fixed immediately, repairs in untreated room additions or alterations, and repairs in areas where wood touches the soil. Most importantly, the companies will not pay for repairs unless they see live termites.
In MetroWest, Chanmuttie and Todo Mohiber have filed damage claims totalling $44,802.31 over the past two years, but Nationwide Termite and Pest Control has cut them checks for only $10,513 for damage from live termites found near a commode. Nationwide President Richard Todd said his company's insurer, Wilson & Schmidt, has to take care of the payments. David Haack, claims representative for Wilson & Schmidt of Orlando, said his company had no comment.
In north Orange County, Wendy Shore is paying for $12,000 in repairs even though her $300,000 house on Lake Georgia Drive was covered by a termite warranty. The wood near her closet was so ravaged by termites that she had that area rebuilt in 1997. She said she found out too late that her warranty called only for more treatments when termites were found. It didn't pay for damage.
In 1998, after she spent $2,000 for a Sentricon termite baiting system, her gardener found evidence of another infestation. That colony had eaten through the wood supporting her master bedroom shower stall.
What can be done
With so many contractual loopholes, the state Bureau of Entomology proposed standardizing pest-control contracts last year. But the pest-control industry successfully lobbied the bureau to drop the changes.
Standard contracts, said industry president Roger Lewis, may not help consumers. He said companies sell pest-control services, not chemicals, and that consumers should be able to shop for the company that provides the right type of service for them.
Even though standard contracts for pesticide applications haven't caught on in Florida, state law does require a standard contract for termite inspections on real-estate transactions. The contract lets prospective buyers know which areas of the house have visible termite damage.
Overall, contract disputes are the state's main source of complaints against pest-control companies. And though the complaints have climbed from 348 in 1991 to 561 in 1998, the Bureau of Entomology's disciplinary action against termite treatment companies has leveled off or even diminished.
That track record could reflect the bureau's low staffing levels, Helseth said.
But change is on the way, said Steve Dwinell, chief of the entomology bureau. He said the state has levied fines, usually $1,000 to $2,000, against four operators this year and has about 10 upcoming cases.
"You'll see a jump in '99," he said.
Florida has not followed the lead of other Southeastern states in requiring minimum treatment standards before and after construction. Georgia, for instance, dictates the amount of termiticide that should be applied and how it should be applied. Pest-control operators there must remove all termite tunnels in and around houses.
Throughout the Southeast, particularly Florida, termites have long performed a necessary function -- annihilating dead wood. Man's inability to control such a persistent force of nature may come as no surprise.
Coppenbarger said everyone is to blame for the increase in termite home invasions.
"If you wanted to point fingers, everybody needs to point them at themselves. And the people are at fault, even the consumer," he said.
With only the $16,000 bill to remind her of her ordeal, Kansol said she has tried to pinpoint where she went wrong. But she said she would not have changed one thing she did.
"I did everything right, everything they told me to do."
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