Doc Summary
A pre-construction soil treatment utilizes mass amounts and volumes of product most often. A pre-construction soil treatment is the best treatment for termites for new construction. You only have one shot at treating the soil before they pour the slab! It is imperative that you are safe and follow all labels, laws, and policies on these jobs. The soil pretreat lays a horizontal barrier on the soil beneath the home’s foundation.
Required Procedures #
- Do not ever start spraying a pretreat early. Arrow notifies the regulatory agency of soil treatments and when they are to start. Never start early. Always double-check the amount called in to our regulatory agency. All workers must be off the job site until after the product is dry.
- Equipment: Power sprayer, 5-gallon bucket for calibration, hard hat, safety gloves, safety vest, rubber boots, safety glasses, paperwork, graph, tool kit, and spill kit are the basic essentials.
- Prep: Mix the right amount of product and water. Do not drive around with a full tank with a lot of weight in the truck! Calibrate your pump at least once per week and time yourself on the job site for how long it took you to fill up your tank and how long it took you to spray out your tank. Double-check the treatment and site measurements while your tank is filling up. If you are in downtime while you are filling up with water, make work phone calls, organize your truck, rinse out bottles, plan your next stop, or complete your paperwork. There is always something for you to do.
- Calibrating your pump: Get a timer and a 5-gallon bucket. Start your pump and put the ball valve or handle to the setting you will be spraying at. Time yourself how long it takes you to fill up the five-gallon bucket. If it takes 20 seconds, then your pump is spraying at 15 gallons per minute (make sense?). How long will it take to spray out 300 gallons like that? 20 minutes is the answer. You need to be able to figure this out.
Treatment Summary #
FOLLOW THE LABEL AND LAW. EVERY PRODUCT YOU USE, YOU SHOULD READ THE LABEL. MANY HAVE DIFFERENT ACTIVE INGREDIENTS, MIX RATES, AND SAFETY REGULATIONS.
- Your goal is to provide a continuous treated horizontal zone on a pre-treat while concentrating more on piping penetrations and footings.
- Start at the furthest point and work your way back to the truck.
Treatment Application #
Arrow always puts more than the minimum on the jobs. In most circumstances, the minimum is 1.0 gallons applied per 10 square feet on a pretreat. This is at the normal rate. You want to concentrate more product around the pipes and around the footings. Additionally, products need to be placed when available in the flat work joint areas. Additional gallons need to be added when doing this.
- Gallons: For a 2,200 sq. ft. job, the minimum gallons would be 220 gallons. We will put more than the minimum. Put around another 20 gallons on the job, which would be 240 on the paperwork. If you treat the flat work as well, you need to calculate in 4 gallons per 10 linear feet of additional product. Do more than the minimum!
Flat Work #
“Flat work” is additional concrete pours around the main foundation. Spray and label all flat work at 1 gallon per 10 sq. ft. We need to treat this soil, so we do not have to go back and drill it once the building is finished. Be sure to communicate “flat work” to the contractor and for them to call us if we cannot treat it at the time of the pretreat.
- Example: If you spray a 20 ft long band of flat work and treat it 2 feet wide, that is 40 sq. ft. This would require 4 gallons to that area. It is okay to spray the area much heavier.
Conclusion #
A good pre-treat sets the foundation of the ability to control termites for the whole life of the structure. It also gives the customer an easy avenue for the renewal service and for us to sell additional services to the new homeowner. After a pre-treat, a perimeter service is needed on the structure. The perimeter is done once final grade is met and is already included in the price of the pre-treat.