I think for this you have to go and meet pest control officers. Here noone is professional. I'm also an engineer. Maybe if you say I can help you finding some suitable answer for your problem. Just try google I think you have 99% chance to find your answers to the problems there.

Cheers.

Does your town or county have a building department? If so, call them and ask about the building codes. I googled for "Oklahoma building code" and found the site below - it may be a place to start. What is discouraging is that they say, "The State of Oklahoma has no statewide building code according to the Institute for Building and Home Safety."

That site does provide links to various building departments, so you can locate yours (if there is one).

Here is a link that might be useful: Oklahoma County and Local Building Code Permit OR Contractor License Information

Woodswell... Thank you Thank you Thank you... although I was not able to find the exact building code that requires pretreatment, I was able to locate some local resources that will be able to confirm what the technician said.

zion.power... your suggestion assisted me with more keywords in my searching. With that I was able to confirm the Dept of Agriculture Laws and Rules for Minimum Pesticide Pretreatment Requirements.

Now maybe someone can answer this question for me... What is a "Stubout"? This is a clip from the above refernced rules ~ "Immediately after completion of treatment to the main slab area, each termite
pretreatment shall be stenciled or a sticker or tag permanently affixed to one of
the stubouts in an area which will be readily accessible. The stencil, sticker, or
tag shall identify the company, date of treatment, and termiticide used."

I'm already having issues with the builder correcting a roof that is leaking. I'm hoping that I can locate this information and go directly to the pest control place.

Thanks again!!

"Stubout" from what I understand are the pipes and other things that stick through the foundation/slab. So somewhere in your house should be a tag or sticker attached to one of the pipes - but it may be inside a wall now. I suspect it only was required to be accessible during the early parts of construction .

In our county, the building department requires that all subs that do work that must be inspected be listed by the GC. So when you call your county, they may be able to tell you the name of the termite company that did your ground treatment. In fact, the certificate from the termite company is required to be in our permit box onsite - so I've seen ours and know who did the work.

Good luck with this - it is important!

bizy

Finding termites in your yard or flower beds is not unusual - especially if you put down a nice fresh batch of mulch that they will gladly munch on. If you turn over any large rock in your garden, you are likely to see mites muching away at the mulch around the rock.

They key is to determine if they have penetrated into your house. Since your home is fairly new, and assuming they did spray the foundation before it was backfilled, I would be a bit surporsed if they made it into the house in a year. It's not impossible - but unlikely unless your builder buried a big pile of wood near the foundation (not unheard of either).

The first thing to do is look for the key signs of the mites - the brown mud tunnels that you will see on the inside walls of your foundation or on wood studs. I don't know what kind of access you have from your basement - you want to check along the foundation walls and at the interface between the wood framing and the foundation. Look around the entire foundation interior perimeter - particularly in places where there would be lot's of moisture. If you can't see from the inside, take a shovel and dig on the outside until you get to the transition point of the foundation top to the first floor joists to see if you can locate the mud tunnels. Swarming of the mites inside the house is also a sign - but it does not sound like you are at that point.

If they did make it into the house - then you need to call in professionals who will drill holes and pump pestisides into the infiltrated areas. They will drill through concrete slabs to makes ure they get every possible area around and below the foundation. This can run up in cost pretty quickly.

If they did not make it in, then I would call a termite company who should offer perimeter pestiside pumping. It should only cost a few hundred dollars (not 1500) and they will pump the pestiside around the foundation perimeter with holes spaced every few feet. They are basically injecting your soil with pestiside that should leach all the way down the side to the footers to create a barrier.

I would then go on line and look for termite traps - which are basically tubes that you stick into the ground with pieces of wood in them. The tubes have large covers with a removable cap that allows bait (dry wood) and poison sticks to be inserted. You check the bait every few weeks and if termites make it in, you replace the wood with a food that contains a delayed poison that the termites will eat and then bring back to the nest. They feed themselves by regurgitating - so when they pass the food around it will kill the termites in the nest, hopefullty getting the queen.

We also found termites in our last house - in the flower beds (they had not penetrated). I had heard that a few of our neighbors has some termites that did get into their house - which is what prompted me to take some proactive measures. However - these houses were 6 or 7 years old when they started having termite issues inside the house.
I puchased all of my termite kit supplies on line for a few hundfred dollars. It's very easy to drill holes and install the tubes and bait. The pro's wanted thousands to install the same thing I could by on line.

best of luck.

Sniff,
Thanks for the advice! The inspector did not find evidence that the buggers had penetrated the house, my work is prevention.
I have found some intriguing information though! Oklahoma City requires builders to do a soil pretreatment during construction of the foundation. (Woodswell - your link helped me get hold of the Code Enforcement Manager to confirm this.)
The Dept of Ag also confirmed the pretreatment process. Seems like they have had some crooked pest control companies and they are willing to come out and do soil samples to determine what product was used and if it was applied at the appropriate rate.
I have also found out that there is paperwork for this that should have been disclosed to us when we closed on our house. It's mysteriously missing, neither the mortgage company or the title company seem to be able to locate the form.
I think we've been had by the "good ole boy" network here in OKC!

THanks for all your help! Excellent resources and advice was given and I really appreciate the time you took to help me! I wish I could bake cookies for all you!! :))

Like you said you should have gotten a certificate at closing showing the date of pretreatment and that it was good for a year. I'm a realtor here in OK and I've seen those certificates signed by my clients. As well our builder at least has it on our budget spreadsheet. So I'm assuming it will be done. May just ask about that tomorrow.

LOL!! Jeanne I saw your blueprint posted and I thought to myself "That sooooo looks like an Oklahoma house! What area of OK are you building in? We are SW OKC, out in the sticks :)

I have still not been able to track down the form, no one seems to have it, the pest control place (if there was one) didn't etch it on the stubwall either. The building inspector said that if I have problems tracking down the info to let him know and he can pull the inspection report to see if it's there.

If you're in the OKC area, I can tell you what builder NOT use. :))) Just kidding, for all his faults, he really did do right by us in other aspects. I doubt he's being deceptive, just very absent minded and thrifty, it's frustrating becuase it's my investment that he's forgetting about and trying to cheap with after he's already been paid!

Courtney

bizydiggin,
Glad I could help you find the info you needed! I hope you find out that the work was done properly and the paperwork was just misfiled. Good luck with everything.