Insects in the Firewood!

[Carl]

We have a cat but it can't climb walls or get to the ceiling. When my wife sits on the couch and screems a
spider just crawled across me it is time to find out where they are coming from. Sometimes the spiders
are seen while laying in bed crawling on the ceiling. Not often but between all the sightings it was time
to change our wood storage system. It worked for us as we haven't seen any for a few years now.
What ever you feel comfortable with must work for you. Just not something we want crawling around us
while we sleep if we can avoid it. They aren't poison but can leave red marks when they bite. I have found
several black widows in the woodshed so no need to take un necessary chances by bringing them in.

We have no problm with termites here yet but black ants are plentifull. They do like damp fresh wood
and once it drys out they will leave unless they have a nest built for the long haul. Mostly these are in
older decayed wood and not really a problem. If I find an ant nest in dead wood we have brought home I
will get out the poison and terminate them so they don't spread.

The sealed rubbermaid box may be an idea that would help contain the bugs.

 

[Girl]

We renamed the island I live on to Spider Island, I moved in here mid summer & there have been spiders from day one,
before any wood delivery. I don't know if my wood piles made any difference on increasing the spider population.
Everyone has them around here.
They eat the bad bugs & keep the skeeters down (bats help too), I just deal with it.

 

[Carl]

Wife and I just spent 5 hours cutting up three dead elm trees and splitting them. When splitting there were some pieces with green
worms and lots of spiders starting to crawl in 40 degree temps. I am sure this will stay outside till it is put into the stove.

In our second home we visit whenever we can during the summer we would come back in a couple of weeks to find some
spiders near the windows inside. Finally determined these were brought in on the outside chairs we used even if just left
out for one day. Our solution to this was to wash the chairs well before bringing them in for storage. Now no more spiders
in the living space. We don't mind bugs outside but do mind them in the living space.

 

[ControlFreak]

I agree with jpl1nh about the bugs needing their environment to survive. Carpenter ants need a lot of moisture, and termites need a direct path to the soil. My opinion about carpenter ants is that they can actually be helpful to identify a problem. If you have a problem with your siding and moisture is getting behind it, carpenter ants may find this place and move in. They don't create the problem, they just take advantage of an existing one. If you see the carpenter ants, then you know that there's water getting in somewhere, and you should start looking for it. We had carpenter ants coming into the house, and I eventually found a place where some siding was leaking, and the ants were living where all the water was leaking in. They didn't create the problem, but alerted me to start looking for it.

Termites and carpenter ants can't live in a pile of dry wood, but they will live under the wood if it's sitting on moist soil.

 

[grizzly2]

Fortunately we have a lot of oak in my neck of the woods. However powderpost beetles LOVE oak. I bought a load of oak that had powderpost beetles in it and put in in my 30 cord wood shed. Those little buggers spread from one pile to another for years. I did notice that they seldom took up housekeeping in the other species of hardwood though. Only once in a very old garage did I see any ppb infestation of soft wood.

Being that my house is not built of oak I got brave or foolish and brought the oak into the house. I have never found any ppb damage to the house or even the oak mouldings in the house. I think once the little darlin's get all snuggled into a good chunk of oak, they are inclined to stay there. Now, some of you won't believe this, but in the evening sitting by the fire and woodpile we could hear the ppbs chewing the oak. The were not hard to hear, and sounded just as you might expect... we enven found a little acumulation of sawdust at the bottom of the woodrack at times.

Actually more anoying were the spiders. We would see a few of those, but they did leave the woodpile and head for the corners of the ceiling. Only one winter did we have a flying insect, which I did not recognize. But after 30 years of burning wood in the same house we have had no known damage. 8-/

 

[johnsopi]

We have big wolf spiders, I slapped one a while back that was like hitting peanut with legs.