Pest Control Nundah, QLD 4012

Why Nundah properties face the pressures they do

The housing stock

Nundah has mainly interwar housing stock — 1920s and 1930s — on top of a suburb that shifted from rural to residential after the 1880s railway. Historically working class, it has gentrified into a mix of traditional worker’s cottages and modern high-density apartment blocks, and the population density of about 3,360 per km² confirms how much unit stock has been added. The worker’s cottages are the technically interesting part: small timber homes on low stumps with restricted subfloor access, very commonly underpinned, enclosed or built in later — which is precisely where concealed termite entry happens.

Housing of this age was framed and stumped long before AS 3660 chemical treated zones existed as a standard, and before the soil treatments of the mid-twentieth century — organochlorines, banned in Australia in the mid-1990s — were withdrawn. Nothing applied to a house of this era is still protecting it. What protects it now is subfloor access, ventilation, visible ant caps and an annual inspection.

Water, ground and moisture

Kedron Brook and the Schulz Canal run through Nundah, the canal bisecting the Toombul Shopping Centre carpark, which is particularly susceptible to flash flooding during peak storm seasons and was inundated in the 2022 floods. Kedron Brook’s original course was redirected into the Schulz Canal to allow Brisbane Airport expansion; the canal discharges to Moreton Bay at Nudgee Beach. The low-lying land along the brook and canal is the wet part of the suburb.

Vegetation on the doorstep

Kalinga Park lies on the northern boundary of the broader locality, on Kedron Brook, with the Nundah cemetery on Hedley Avenue.

What we actually look at in Nundah

Subfloor, stumps, bearers, joists and ant caps — plus the interior room by room, the roof void where there is safe access, and the fences, retaining walls, stumps, decks and trees inside the property boundary. Termites arrive from the yard, not the front door.

The four things that most often matter on a Nundah property:

• Built-in worker’s cottage subfloors. Low stumps, tight crawl space, and a century of underpinning, enclosing and slab-pouring underneath — the most common serious finding in this housing type.
• Flash flooding on the Schulz Canal. The Toombul carpark is particularly susceptible during peak storm seasons and was inundated in 2022; nearby properties dry slowly.
• Rodent movement after inundation. Flooding drives rats and mice out of stormwater and into buildings, and the roof line is where they get in.
• Interwar timber framing — installed decades before chemical treated zones existed as a standard.

Where Nundah sits on termite risk

CSIRO’s termite hazard map places Brisbane and south-east Queensland in Zone C, medium hazard, on a four-band scale (A negligible, B low, C medium, D high); the highest band, Zone D, begins further north around Rockhampton. CSIRO’s own framing is that the risk of termite attack on mainland Australia “generally increases in a northerly direction, with the highest risk in the subtropics and tropics.” In CSIRO’s national termite survey, 44.7% of the Brisbane properties surveyed had termites active outside the home and 23.6% had termites inside the building itself.

Source: CSIRO, Managing Termites (CSIRO Infratech, 2024), after Leicester et al. (2003), A risk model for termite attack in Australia. The hazard map is regional, not suburb-level — CSIRO has never classified an individual suburb, and the underlying survey notes that within any hazard zone there may still be hot spots or areas where termites are scarce. Source: Cookson & Trajstman, Termite Survey and Hazard Mapping, CSIRO, 2002 — interview survey conducted 1996–98, n=394 Brisbane dwellings. Australia-wide the same survey found termites somewhere on the property at 35.6% of 5,122 homes. We quote the Brisbane figures because they are the ones that describe this market; we do not use the “one in three Queensland homes” line, because the underlying study is national, counts termites anywhere on the property including trees and fences, and its authors described it as an interim result.

The termites that matter here

Two subterranean species do most of the structural damage in Nundah: Coptotermes acinaciformis, which Queensland Government describes as the most economically important and widespread subterranean termite, and Schedorhinotermes species. Both occur throughout Queensland and both attack all timber, especially pine. The West Indian drywood termite (Cryptotermes brevis) is also established in many Brisbane suburbs; it needs no ground contact and lives on the moisture in the timber itself. Full species detail and what each one does →

Our services in Nundah

A general pest treatment is $300 including GST for a standard Nundah home — inside, outside and the accessible roof void. A termite inspection with a written AS 3660.2 report is $350, and a Termidor HE treated zone is measured and quoted at $78 per lineal metre. German cockroach is excluded from general treatments and quoted separately at $180 per affected room. Full price list and exclusions →

Every product we apply is APVMA-registered for the use we put it to and applied at label rate, and we will tell you what went where. We do not describe treatments as chemical free, non-toxic or one hundred per cent safe. Every product we use, by name →

Around Nundah

We work Nundah regularly — around Zion Hill, named by German Moravian missionaries in 1838 when the area was known as German Station, Nundah railway station, Nundah Village and the missionaries’ graves in the Nundah cemetery. Population was 13,098 at the 2021 Census.

Pest control in Nundah — frequently asked