Sentricon Termite installation in Marlboro, NJ

Challenge

My primary responsibility as a pest control technician is dealing with a homeowner's worst nightmare, wood-destroying subterranean termites. These termites live in colonies that have thousands of foraging workers that hunt for their food source, wood. Sometimes they find a tree, but, unfortunately, sometimes they find a home. 

The most effective, proven way to protect a home against termite damage is with a Sentricon baiting system. This system, installed around the entire exterior of the home,  keeps termites at bay and kills those that trespass all year round. However, the Sentricon system is only as good as the pest control company that installs the system. And that's where I come in as s Sentricon installer. I take pride to make sure the baiting system is functioning at its best.

Since every house is different, no two Sentricon jobs are exactly the same. It seems inevitable that an obstacle or two (or three!) will pop up during a job. Some you can anticipate them before the job even starts. Others take you by surprise during the job. Either way, an experienced installer knows how to deal with them. 

I was assigned a Sentricon installation at a residence in Marlboro. This job had its fair share of monkey wrenches thrown in the works. Like with all installation jobs we do, the issues were resolved and the installation was successful. These were the challenges on this Marlboro project.

With a baiting system, the underground baits have to be installed around the home perimeter with a fair amount of precision so there are no gaps wide enough for termites to sneak though. Sometimes the digging is easy, and sometimes it's not. With this job, I was aware of the garage concrete slab before placing the bait stations. What took me by surprise was the thickness of this particular slab. Normally, a concrete garage slab is no more than 9 inches thick. With this residence, the slab was over 20 inches thick. And drilling the holes took double the time. This happened to be a good day to have another technician on board with me. Since I had two drills, we worked together to prep the area without delaying the installation.

Another installation issue was that the customer was not able to move old clay shingles from the exterior of the home that happened to be in the direct path of the treatment line. One great reason why I enjoy working for Cowleys is that a technician can always pick up the phone and call someone with a ton of experience to get an opinion about how to handle a particular problem. I discussed this with one of the head inspectors, and he agreed with me. With the customer's approval, since the shingles could not be removed and I could not dig through them, I went around the obstacle as neatly and efficiently as possible, always keeping in mind that I had to maintain a full barrier around the home for the baiting system to be effective. 

Solution

No termite control is ever issue-free. I've come to expect obstacles, and what makes this job fun and challenging is overcoming them for a successful installation. With this assignment, we overcame all of the installation obstacles, as we always do. At the end of the day, we installed a top-notch baiting system that would effectively protect the homeowner's residence. The job was completed it in a timely fashion with P.J.'s help. The good Sentricon installers expect obstacles and figure out how to overcome them.