Carpenters….

After Pup left we called an Exterminator (from Cambridge Chemicals) to have a look at our attic. During the time Pup slept upstairs he was noticing saw dust and some sand coming off the ceiling in regular intervals. He also noticed some noises like crackling and small pieces of material falling under the panels of the roof.
I opened the panel, where we had identified the largest amounts of dropping and found in the process a number of carpenters — as we had started to call them (carpenter ants) — but nothing close to what I was expecting to find. Of course the insulation was still hiding the roof’s wood but I was disappointed. The insulation at the highest point showed some signs of a water leak, though everything was dry as far as I could tell.
The exterminator came the next day and from the dust I did not cleanup he determined that those were carpenter ants at work and that he could not do much as the whole nesting was completely invisible due to the paneling and insulation. He suggested to redo the roof and kill the beasts during this process. That suggestion did not seem very reasonable to me as redoing the roof is a major undertaking and costs a lot of money. He also told me that with a ‘bomb’ which releases aerosols the ants could certainly be largely killed but would equally certainly come back. After I offered him to expose the two biggest spots of activities down to the roof frame he indicated that he thought he could exterminate the ants.
So, I went back and took down the insulation, which was actually really easy and found in the highest piece of the frame a large ‘gallery’ about one finger thick, which was completely carved out of the wood, but now there was not a single carpenter in sight. I found one later in the room but nothing on the inside of the roof close to the gallery. They might have moved into a different spot as Wikipedia suggests 🙂
I am pretty sure we are not going to redo the roof just for the ants, and I think I will just open the panels and the insulation and exterminate the ants myself. Maybe I will on top of that place a aerosol bomb in the attic to make double sure the ants get killed. We are also spraying the garden and the foundations and drop some granulate against the ants from the outside. I am already now quite happy that I opened the panels and insulation in the attic because now I have seen what the roof looks like from the inside. I think I can easily redo the attic and even do a better job than what is there right now. I might even be able to put in the new sky light by myself — Ana would really love to have more light in the North side of the attic.
Stay tuned…. I will report on the next steps.