# Pre-Demolition (Shed) Pesticide



## 95PGTTech (Jun 24, 2014)

Short version:

I need to tear down a shed. I began basic demo and found millions of ants/termites that skeeve out even me. I would like to bomb the shed with some sort of pesticide at low cost and low risk to environment (well water) prior to continuing to tear down. How to?

I'm hesitant to call a pro for a "treatment" because likely most of this structure (if any) will not survive. The small 20oz cans of ant and roach spray work really good so far but don't get you very far in a 600sqft shed.









For those that prefer a novel:

I bought a house that has two sheds (more like barns) on the property. Although they passed the home inspector fine, the homeowners refuses to policy us until they are completely repaired of what they termed wood rot. The pictures and opinions were made by a third party contractor who took pictures from his car roughly 500ft from the sheds with a 250mm lens. :thumbsup:

All of this was conveniently told to me AFTER we had closed. The home inspector did find some items on the house that needed to be fixed which we and the current homeowner split. I already sent an email to my Realtor because we have a really good relationship with the previous homeowner and everything went so smoothly to see if he would kindly split the cost of demolition to the two sheds with us. We had intended on destroying both sheds when we purchased but over the course of time. Now homeowners wants this done by 04/28 or (insert unknown consequence).

The smaller, better condition one is already down. In two days we got all of his raw materials storage out (I really wanted to keep that), gutted it, windows out, took it down to the studs and tipped it with my truck and winch. Dismantled everything as small as possible to neatly fit into a dumpster, sorted everything into neat piles of 2x4, plywood, metal, glass, insulation, sheetrock. No slab underneath, just sand poured to level and paver stones so those will stay there for now. Raked to grade and made it look good. I put the metal out on the street knowing someone would come recycle it and sure enough, ten minutes later. Luckily I am able to get rid of the sheetrock, insulation, and anything else that will fit into small, light 30gal garbage bags at work dumpster so long as I don't fill it for the given month. Dumpster arrives tomorrow and should make weight easy, only 3-4 small pieces of concrete. The rear wall bottom 2 feet was essentially turned to dusty by termites but didn't seem to be any active critters so although gross, everything went well. Rolled the insulation as we took it down and contained most of the mess. Lots and lots of bags.

The other shed is massive - two stories, I'd estimate easily 20x30. Half of it is concrete pad, though it seems level and in good shape and I'd like to leave it. We opened one wall and it was a complete different story, active ant/termite nests everywhere we disturbed. This grossed everyone out and brought work to a halt. Each piece of insulation we would roll up and bag would be 10 minutes of killing ants on your arms, something says not safe about that to me. I'm already calling in every friend, coworker, and family favor I have to get people here to help me make this deadline, not sure I'm going to have friends if we keep dealing with the bugs. I'd like to know what people are using to just "bomb" the entire thing and kill everything that moves prior to going back in there.

At this point, my hope is that the half of the shed (it was built as two halves, not sure if addition or the other half was part of a previous structure or whatever) that sits above the concrete is good. I can see the footer 2x4 exposed and the header 2x4 on that side and both look good, seems just some aesthetic damage to the outside wood paneling. Roof looks good on that half as well, so I'm hoping to strip that side down to the roof and 2x4 framed walls and leave it standing, knock the rest (no foundation, direct plywood contact with ground, bottom 3-4 feet of the walls non existent) down and get rid of it. Have the homeowners reinspect what we left and maybe do some sort of carport with it for the time being.


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## oh'mike (Sep 18, 2009)

Sevin 5 or sevin 10 dust---cheap--as safe as you can buy and effective---

sold in all garden centers --


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