Search the paperwork from your closing for a wood-destroying insect report. In Texas a general home inspection and a WDI inspection are separate jobs under separate licenses, and the second only happens if somebody ordered and paid for it. If your closing packet has no WDI report, you do not have one.

Quick answer: Order a Texas Official Wood Destroying Insect report if you did not get one, then inspect in four weekly passes: the soil line around the foundation, every place water sits, every gap wider than a quarter inch, and the yard. Aim for 6 to 8 inches of bare foundation showing below your wall covering.

If you did get one, read the top. The Texas Official Wood Destroying Insect Report required by the Texas Department of Agriculture states in capital letters: "THIS IS NOT A STRUCTURAL DAMAGE REPORT OR A WARRANTY AS TO THE ABSENCE OF WOOD DESTROYING INSECTS" [1]. It covers only "those parts of the structure(s) that are visible and accessible at the time of the inspection" [1], and furniture or a finished wall covering counts as an obstruction. So you have a record of one day, limited to the parts of the house the inspector could see and reach.

What the inspection you paid for actually covered

Only a certified applicator or technician licensed in the termite control category can complete a WDI report, per TDA's report instructions [2]. That is a different license from your home inspector's. The instructions require attics and crawl spaces to be inspected when accessible, and allow an inspector to mark them entirely inaccessible only when access is physically impossible for any inspector [2].

The form also carries conducive-condition checkboxes flagging the conditions that invite an infestation:

• wood-to-ground contact
• excessive moisture
• debris under or around the structure
• footing too low or soil line too high
• wood rot
• heavy foliage
• a planter box abutting the structure
• a wood pile in contact with the structure
• a wooden fence in contact with the structure
• insufficient ventilation [1]

Every checked box is an item on your list.

Week 1: walk the ground line around your foundation

Take a tape measure and a flat screwdriver and walk the perimeter. One measurement matters above the rest: how far the soil sits below the bottom edge of your brick, stucco, or siding. AgriLife's subterranean termite guide puts that clearance at 6 to 8 inches below the top of the foundation or wall covering [3].

If the beds have been topped up each spring without the old layer coming out, the mulch line will have climbed toward the brick, so measure before assuming the clearance is there.

Week 1 checks:

• Pull soil and mulch back until 6 to 8 inches of foundation shows [3]
• Set wood porches and steps on concrete bases at least 6 inches clear of soil [3]
• Drop planter box soil to at least 6 to 8 inches below any sill plate [3]
• Find fence panels or gate posts butting into the siding, a conducive condition on the form [1]
• Move firewood, scrap lumber, and formboards off the ground, away from the wall
• Probe reachable wood at ground level, door facings included; sound wood resists the tip

Week 2: find every place water sits

Subterranean termites have very little resistance to dehydration and must stay in contact with soil or another moisture source, per Texas A&M urban entomology [4].

Outside, run a hose into your gutters and watch where the downspouts discharge. If water lands in the bed against the wall, extend the spout onto ground that slopes away. Check the air conditioning condensate line, which on many Houston and Austin houses drains onto the soil beside the slab.

Inside, put a hand on the water heater pan, then feel the back corner of the cabinet under every sink, where a slow drip collects unseen for months.

A pier-and-beam house has four published clearances to check [3]:

• at least 18 inches between floor joists and soil
• at least 12 inches between floor beams and soil
• 70 percent of the crawlspace soil under a 6-mil polyethylene vapor barrier
• 1 square foot of ventilation per 150 square feet

Week 3: close the gaps, starting at a quarter inch

AgriLife's rodent IPM plan gives the two numbers that decide most exclusion work: mice get through openings as small as 1/4 inch, and rats need about 1/2 inch [6].

Walk the house with a flashlight at dusk, when gaps show as light from inside:

• the garage door bottom seal, which perishes and leaves a gap at each corner
• the wall penetration where the dryer vent or AC line set enters
• unscreened attic gable vents and soffit returns

Weep holes are the exception: those small gaps in brick veneer mortar are drainage, so never caulk them. AgriLife's scorpion guide, written by Wizzie Brown, recommends packing them with steel wool, copper mesh, or screen wire, which blocks the opening while water still drains, plus weatherstripping on loose-fitting doors [7].

Get into the attic early, before it heats up, and look for daylight at the roofline and droppings along the top plates. Scorpions are active at night and are often found in the attics of Texas homes [7].

Week 4: the yard and the tree canopy

Stand at the street and look at your roofline. Any limb touching or overhanging the roof is a bridge, so cut it back clear of the roof edge. The same scorpion guide calls for pruning branches away from the structure and clearing boards and stones from around it [7].

AgriLife's rodent plan says to remove mulch from building foundations to reduce harborage and to trim ground cover so bare ground shows [6]. A 2-inch bed stopping a foot short of the foundation plants the same flowers without the moisture or the cover.

If your yard came with fire ants, the calendar decides your first move. The Two-Step Method from Texas A&M's fire ant research project starts with bait broadcast over the whole yard between late August and mid-October, and step two is treating the individual problem mounds that are left after the bait has worked [8].

Houston and Austin are not the same inspection

Houston sits on expansive clay. Houston OEM's expansive soils page describes smectite-rich soils that swell when wet and shrink when dry, with expansions of 10 percent or more typical for the area, and warns that the volume change can damage buildings [9]. The gap at the slab edge in March may not be there in September.

Houston also has Formosan subterranean termites, first found in Texas in 1956 in Pasadena, in Harris County [5]. They swarm at night in late May and early June and head for lights. A mature colony can exceed a million insects [5]. Roof rats seldom burrow and normally nest in double walls and attics, per AgriLife's rats and mice guide [10], so do the attic and tree-limb passes first.

Austin is split down the middle. I-35 separates the limestone of the Edwards Plateau on the west from the Blackland Prairie on the east, per Travis County AgriLife Extension's Austin soils guide, and those eastern soils are black and reddish clays that shrink and swell with moisture, cracking wide and heaving objects like fence posts and patios [11]. If you bought east of the highway, you have Houston's soil problem at an Austin address, so run the slab-edge and ground-line check on the same schedule. West of I-35 the soil is thin over rock, and the 6 to 8 inch clearance is still the number you measure to [3]. Swarm timing splits as well: swarming begins in South Texas in January and February, while Panhandle swarms hold off until April or May [3], which puts Austin somewhere in between. Start windowsill checks early in spring.

How to know you're done, and the mistakes new owners make

You are done when all of these are true:

• 6 to 8 inches of bare foundation shows everywhere below the wall covering
• No wood touches soil anywhere, including fence posts and deck piers
• Every exterior gap at or above 1/4 inch is sealed or screened, weep holes packed
• No tree limb touches the roof
• Downspouts discharge onto ground that slopes away
• You have dated photos of every elevation

The mistakes worth naming:

• caulking weep holes shut, which traps moisture in the wall cavity
• treating a clean WDI report as a warranty, which the form denies [1]
• doing all of this once, when the clay cycle and the swarm calendar make it annual work

Run the whole pass again each spring before swarm season, and put the date on every photo so one year can be compared against the next.

Where a professional inspection fits

Closing the gap your WDI report leaves is what a second, separate inspection is for. Homeowners in Houston and Austin search for that inspection under phrases like green pest control and eco-friendly pest control. Those are consumer search terms, and Natran Green Pest Control uses the first visit to set out what the work involves at a specific address.

A Natran Green Pest Control technician walks the structure and the yard first and identifies what is actually present. The conducive conditions found at the address go into the written record. Treatment is applied according to the product label, at the harborage the inspection identified. Monitoring afterward shows whether what you corrected stayed corrected.

Ask for that written record at the end, with each condition tied to the spot where the technician found it and the measurement that failed. It gives the four weekly passes above a starting list specific to your address.

Frequently asked questions

Does a general home inspection include a termite inspection in Texas?

These are two separate jobs in Texas. A wood-destroying insect inspection goes on its own state form, and it can only be completed by a certified applicator or technician licensed in the termite control category [2], which is a different license from your general home inspector's. Check your closing documents for the Texas Official Wood Destroying Insect Report by name. If it is not in there, nobody ran one.

Is a clean WDI report a guarantee my house has no termites?

No, and the form says so directly. The Texas Official Wood Destroying Insect Report states: "THIS IS NOT A STRUCTURAL DAMAGE REPORT OR A WARRANTY AS TO THE ABSENCE OF WOOD DESTROYING INSECTS" [1]. It covers only the parts of the structure that were "visible and accessible at the time of the inspection" [1]. Treat a clean report as a baseline for one date, and ask the seller for any earlier report so you have a second date to compare it against.

My WDI report came back with conducive conditions listed. What do I do about them?

Keep the report as your worklist and clear the boxes one at a time. A checked box on the Texas Official Wood Destroying Insect Report flags something about the property that makes it easier for wood-destroying insects to establish [1]. It does not mean any are there now. Start with the items that come with a number attached, since AgriLife's E-368 guidance gives you a target to measure against: soil 6 to 8 inches below the top of the foundation or wall covering [3]. Photograph each condition before and after you correct it.

When do termites swarm in Houston and Austin?

It depends on the species and where you are. AgriLife reports that native subterranean termite swarming begins in South Texas in January and February, while Panhandle swarms hold off until April or May [3], with Austin between those. Formosan subterranean termites, established around Houston, swarm at night in late May and early June and are strongly attracted to lights [5], which makes a porch light on a humid Houston evening worth switching off. Windowsills and window tracks are the places swarmers turn up indoors, so check both through spring.

How soon after closing does a termite treatment matter?

Before the first swarm season you own the house for. AgriLife puts the start of subterranean termite swarming in the southern half of the state in January and February [3], so a summer or fall closing leaves you that winter to decide. Correct the conditions first: get the Week 1 and Week 2 passes done inside your first month, because the ground line and the places water sits decide how workable your house is for termites whatever gets applied to it. Price a treatment once you have found live activity, damaged wood, or a conducive condition you cannot correct yourself. Read the date on the WDI report before you weigh what it tells you, since it records only what was visible and accessible that day [1].

Should I put mulch against my foundation?

No. Texas A&M AgriLife's rodent action plan recommends removing mulch from building foundations to reduce harborage and trimming ground cover so bare ground shows [6]. AgriLife's termite guidance separately calls for soil to sit 6 to 8 inches below the top of the foundation or wall covering [3], and mulch piled against the wall defeats that clearance. Keep beds shallow and stop them a foot short of the wall. Strip the old layer out before adding a new one.

Reference sources

1. Texas Department of Agriculture, "Texas Official Wood Destroying Insect Report" (form T-5). https://texasagriculture.gov/Portals/0/forms/PEST/Structural/T5_WDI_report.pdf
2. Texas Department of Agriculture, "Instructions for the Texas Official Wood Destroying Insect Report." https://texasagriculture.gov/Portals/0/forms/PEST/Structural/T5_wdi_instructions.pdf
3. Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service, "Subterranean Termites" (E-368). https://extensionentomology.tamu.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2016/06/Subterranean-termites-E368.pdf
4. Texas A&M University Urban and Structural Entomology Program, "Native Subterranean Termites, Reticulitermes sp." https://urbanentomology.tamu.edu/urban-pests/termites/native/
5. Texas A&M University Urban and Structural Entomology Program, "Formosan Subterranean Termites." https://urbanentomology.tamu.edu/urban-pests/termites/formosan/
6. Texas A&M AgriLife Extension School IPM, "IPM Action Plan for Rodents." https://schoolipm.tamu.edu/forms/pest-management-plans/ipm-action-plan-for-rodents/
7. Wizzie Brown, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service, "Scorpions" (E-362). https://www-aes.tamu.edu/files/2014/06/Scorpions.pdf
8. Texas A&M AgriLife, Texas Imported Fire Ant Research and Management Project, "Two-Step Method." https://fireant.tamu.edu/controlmethods/twostep/
9. City of Houston Office of Emergency Management, "Expansive Soils." https://houstonoem.org/expansive-soils/
10. Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service / Texas Wildlife Services, "Rats and Mice." https://agrilife.org/txwildlifeservices/files/2016/08/RatsMice.pdf
11. Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service, Travis County, "The Real Dirt on Austin Area Soils." https://travis-tx.tamu.edu/about-2/horticulture/soils-and-composting-for-austin/the-real-dirt-on-austin-area-soils/