Big Builders Protect New Homes With Borates.Business Editors NOTE TO MEDIA: Photo is available in a Smart News Release(TM) on Business Wire's Home Page at www.businesswire.com and at www.newstream.com ROCKFORD, Tenn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 17, 2002 For the first time since the 1940's the nation's top homebuilders are moving away from soil poison termite termite or white ant, common name for a soft-bodied social insect of the order Isoptera. Termites are easily distinguished from ants by comparison of the base of the abdomen, which is broadly joined to the thorax in termites; in ants, there is pretreatments. All Cylinders research firm surveyed the nation's top ten largest home builders and found that six out of the ten are now using an alternative to soil poisons at some of their projects. The new method of treatment is spraying a borate borate /bo·rate/ (bor´at) a salt of boric acid. bo·rate n. A salt or ester of boric acid. borate any salt of boric acid. termiticide solution on exposed wood during construction. The survey found that divisions of Pulte, K.B. Home, D.R. Horton, Centex, M.D.C. Holdings and Beazer Homes are now using borates for termite pretreatments in many areas of the country. Charles Watson There are multiple people named Charles Watson:
Area, 31,055 sq mi (80,432 sq km). Pop. (2000) 4,012,012, a 15. area said, "We've been treating homes with borates for a year-and-a-half and we've had excellent results. By switching to the borate method we are saving about a day's work (Naut.) the account or reckoning of a ship's course for twenty-four hours, from noon to noon. See also: Day on each home we build. When you are building 500 to 600 homes, the savings are significant." The traditional method for new home termite protection was to pump 300 to 500 gallons of pesticide into the soil around homes. For years, Dursban was the chemical of choice for termite ground treatment. But, the Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), independent agency of the U.S. government, with headquarters in Washington, D.C. It was established in 1970 to reduce and control air and water pollution, noise pollution, and radiation and to ensure the safe handling and will prohibit its use as a termiticide at the end of 2004. In 1999 the Department of Housing and Urban Development approved wood pretreatments, opening the door for borate based Bora-Care(R), which is listed in the International Building Code (NER-617). Kevin Kirkland, president of the Nisus Corporation, the maker of Bora-Care said, "Builders love the product. It saves them time and costs about the same as traditional termiticide soil treatment. It's as effective as using pressure treated lumber, which adds about 3 to 6 thousand dollars to home construction costs. What we have done is develop a method of getting borates to diffuse deep into the wood. Once it's there, the wood won't rot, the termites won't eat it, and it stays in the wood for as long as the wood is in service." (www.nisuscorp.com). Last year approximately 400,000,000 gallons of soil termiticides were used around new home construction in the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. . If the present trend continues among the nations largest homebuilders that number could be cut in half within a few years. Note: A Photo is available at URL URL in full Uniform Resource Locator Address of a resource on the Internet. The resource can be any type of file stored on a server, such as a Web page, a text file, a graphics file, or an application program. : http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/photo.cgi?pw.041702/bb7 |
|
||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion