Termite Damage Repair

What Termite Damage Looks Like Structurally

Subterranean termites are common in North Carolina's humid climate, and they feed on structural wood — floor joists, sill plates, band boards, and other framing members. Over time this hollows out the wood's load-bearing capacity, leading to sagging floors, weakened supports, and in severe cases, instability that reaches the foundation itself.

Triangle Reconstruction repairs the structural damage termites cause — we do not perform termite extermination or pesticide treatment. If you have an active infestation, we recommend a licensed pest control company treat it; we handle the structural repair to your framing and foundation.

Signs of Termite Structural Damage

• Sagging or soft-feeling floors
• Wood that sounds hollow when tapped
• Visible damage to floor joists, sill plates, or band boards in the crawl space
• Sloping floors near affected framing
• Doors and windows that stick as framing shifts

Where the Damage Usually Is

Subterranean termites come up from the soil, so the damage runs bottom-up and the members at the bottom take it first. In roughly the order we find them affected:

• Sill plate — the treated timber sitting directly on the foundation wall, and the first framing member termites reach
• Band board — the vertical member on top of the sill that your floor joists attach into
• Floor joists, worst at the ends where they bear on the girder or the sill
• Girders and support columns, where the loads are highest and the consequences of section loss are worst
• Subfloor, usually later, and usually only where a joist below it has already gone

How We Repair It

We inspect the crawl space and framing to map the extent of the damage, then repair it with the same structural techniques used for other framing damage — sistering weakened joists with new lumber, replacing severely damaged girders, sill plates, or band boards, and adding support jacks or stabilization where the damage has reached the foundation.

Mapping it properly matters more than it sounds. Termite damage follows the grain inside a member and can leave a joist that looks sound from below while most of its section is gone. Sounding and probing the wood, rather than looking at it, is what establishes how far the repair actually has to extend — and it is why the scope sometimes grows once the crew is under the house.

Sequencing: Treatment First, Repair Second

If the colony is still active, treatment comes first. Repairing framing around live termites means paying to install new lumber for them to move into. A licensed pest control company treats the infestation; we come in afterwards and repair the structure they were eating.

Most people find this page in that gap — the exterminator has been and gone, and the question of who fixes the joists is still open. That is the job this page is about.

Why It Happened, and Keeping It From Happening Again

Subterranean termites need moisture as much as they need wood, which is why they turn up under houses rather than in them. A damp crawl space — bare soil, poor drainage, a missing or torn vapor barrier, standing water after rain — is the condition that makes a home attractive in the first place, and the same condition that causes rot in the same members.

So repairing the framing without drying the space is half a job. Depending on what the inspection finds, that means a vapor barrier, drainage or a sump pump to deal with bulk water, and often encapsulation to hold the space dry afterwards. None of that is termite treatment — it is removing the reason the crawl space was hospitable.