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Efflorescence and brown granules


mridgeelk

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Today in a crawlspace of a 1973 home there was this brown granular stuff that appears to have been placed on the stem wall footer and the interior pads. Any ideas what it is?

Also should this amount of scaling/spalling of the concrete along with the efflorescence be of concern?

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I just read John Dirks post from this past January and I think the boric acid idea is correct. If that brown stuff is ant waste it must mean they have sphincters shaped like a rhombus or some other polygon.

The white stuff is either boric acid or lime. People use boric acid to deter insects, particularly ants. People use lime to treat nasty plumbing leaks in crawlspaces. If it's boric acid, they used an awful lot of it.

The brown stuff is probably diazinon, as Les suggested. It's also used to treat insects, and ants in particular. It's certainly not frass. Insects don't distribute frass like that. (C'mon guys, lets put our frass in a circle around this post -- hey you! You left a gap, be sure to fill it in.) The stuff in your pictures was placed there by a human hand.

My guess is that somebody was concerned about ants, heard that boric acid & diazinon were the thing to use, and figured that, if a little is good, a lot must be better.

Idiots.

- Jim in Oregon

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If that brown stuff is ant waste it must mean they have sphincters shaped like a rhombus or some other polygon.

Not sure what post you're referring to; but the fecal pellets left by Pacific Dampwood Termites look just like little hexagonal drums when looked at under a jeweler's loupe.

Now that you've got that picture in your mind, I return you to your original thread topic.

ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!

Mike

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