This comes up in nearly every conversation we have about termites, and it is worth being direct about it:
A routine pest control plan does not protect your home from termites.
That is not a technicality or an upsell. It is a consequence of how the two problems work, and the gap between them is where a lot of expensive damage happens quietly.
Two different problems in two different places
Household pests, the ants and roaches and spiders and the occasional rodent, live in the same space you do. They come inside for food, water and shelter. They travel across floors, along baseboards, behind appliances, through the gap under a door. They are visible, they are reachable, and their routes are the routes you walk.
Subterranean termites do essentially none of that.
They live in the soil. They enter the structure from underneath or through it, inside mud tubes they build so they never have to cross open air. They feed inside wood rather than on its surface. A colony can work in a house for years without a single member ever crossing a baseboard, walking through a treated doorway, or being seen by anybody.
Pest control is applied where pests travel. Termites do not travel there. Treating the perimeter of a kitchen thoroughly and correctly has no bearing on a colony operating four feet below the crawl space.
What each service is actually doing
Pest Shield, our residential pest work, is about the pests that share your living space. It targets the places they enter and the places they move, and for ongoing problems it works on a recurring basis, because the pressure from outside is continuous and does not stop after a single visit. It starts at $65, which is a starting point rather than a quote.
Termite Shield works on an entirely different footing. It begins with an inspection of the structure and the conditions around it, because there is no sensible way to decide on a treatment before knowing what is there. From that inspection comes a recommendation, which may involve treatment, bait stations monitored over time, or both. It starts at $200, again as a starting point, and treatment follows the inspection rather than preceding it.
The two can be combined into a single plan, which is what a lot of homeowners end up wanting. The point is not that you must choose. The point is that having one does not give you the other.
The assumption is easy to make
Nobody arrives at this belief carelessly. It is a reasonable inference:
- Both are handled by pest control companies
- Termites are insects, and pest control is about insects
- A plan is being paid for every month
- Nothing visibly bad is happening
The last one is the trap. Termite damage is slow and internal. The absence of visible trouble is exactly what a termite problem looks like for most of its duration. By the time a floor gives or trim crumbles, the colony has usually been established for years.
If you are unsure what your current plan covers, the answer is on your service agreement, and it is worth reading rather than assuming. It is a short document and the distinction is generally spelled out.
What this means around here
Most of the housing stock we work with across Bradley County, Hamilton County and Knox County sits on a crawl space, and eastern subterranean termites are the species Tennessee deals with most. That combination, wood structure above soil with a humid space in between, is the arrangement subterranean termites are built for.
It does not mean every home has them. It means the exposure is normal here, and that a home having had pest control for a decade tells you nothing at all about its termite status.
The practical version
If you want the short answer:
- Seeing ants, roaches, spiders or mice? That is pest control.
- Seeing wings on a windowsill, mud tubes on a foundation, or hollow-sounding wood? That is termites, and it starts with an inspection. We wrote about what swarmers mean separately.
- Seeing neither, and the house has never been inspected? Termites are quiet by design, and that is the argument for looking rather than waiting.
- Wanting both handled? They can go in one plan.
If you are not sure which of these you are in, that is a normal place to be, and it is a reasonable thing to ask us about. Telling us what you are seeing and where is usually enough for us to point you at the right service rather than the expensive one.