My Firewood Is Infested With Termites… Now What?

The season of wood burning has come once again, but this time something is wrong with the wood pile – it has been attacked by termites.

But what do you do now? Do you still use the firewood, or get rid of all the hard work you had put in?

As painful as it might sound, it’s not suggested to burn firewood which has been clearly infested with termites, because by bringing it inside your home, even for a moment while you load up your fireplace, wood stove or a furnace, you pose a risk to infest it too.

Besides that, the firewood might be eaten up too much to even burn considerably hot for proper heating.

How to Deal With Termite Infested Firewood

The only thing you can do with this type of wood is dispose it, and there are a couple of ways to do it.

Contact your local solid waste disposal companies and ask if you could dump the firewood there.

You could also simply build a bonfire and burn it outside of your home, just make sure it’s legal to do so beforehand.

Protecting firewood from termites in the first place

The reason why termites attack cordwood is because it is improperly stacked.

You can’t stack firewood as it is purely on the ground, neither can you stack it on some type of other material before elevating it off the ground.

As soon as the firewood or the supports it is stacked on make contact with the ground, it starts to rot – as time goes on, the wood starts to rot even more, and eventually it turns into a treat for termites.

As i said before, the trick is to stack firewood on a higher level, preferably 6 inches (15 cm) off the ground or even more: start by placing supports on which the actual firewood will be stacked (which can be wooden) on things like cinder blocks, bricks or anything that’s strong enough to hold the firewood stack, (that’s also not made from wood), and then begin stacking.

Besides, this method will also help to season the firewood a lot quicker, as the air will be able to circulate even through the bottom.

Do not stack firewood against your house or any other building even if you do elevate it off the ground, as it might still become a breeding ground for many other types of insects or even rodents – you probably don’t want them to find a way into your residence?

Make sure to stack wood at least 5 feet (1.5 m) away from your house or any other building – if you can, stack it even further to make sure the pests keep off.

Additional notes

I know that firewood would look beautiful resting beside a fireplace or a wood stove, but storing firewood indoors is a big no, even if it seems to be pest free, which is almost never the case… This is actually still being done by many homeowners… and then they wonder, from where those bugs are coming from?

If you have already noticed termite or any other pest activity inside your home, it might already mean it has been infested, so the only thing left to do is call the pest control.