Termite Inspections, Brisbane Bayside & Northside

What is actually included

A BugBoss termite inspection covers every accessible part of the building and the property inside the boundary. That means the interior room by room, the roof void where there is safe access, the subfloor where there is safe access, the full external perimeter and slab edge, the garage and outbuildings, and the fences, retaining walls, stumps, trees and garden structures on the block. Termites do not start in the house; they arrive from something in the yard, so an inspection that stops at the walls is only half done.

Every inspection carries three instruments as standard, not as an upgrade:

• Thermal imaging camera — finds temperature anomalies behind linings where active termite workings generate heat and moisture.
• Moisture meter — identifies elevated moisture in wall and floor timbers, which is both a conducive condition and a common indicator of concealed activity.
• Sounding and probing — the physical check that confirms what the instruments suggest.

AS 3660.2:2017 requires photographs as part of the record and requires the inspector to carry cameras, moisture meters and probes. We take photographs of every finding and every area of concern, and they go in the report.

The report you receive

You get a written report, normally the same day. It records the date and time of inspection and the weather conditions, the areas inspected, the areas that could not be inspected and why, any termite activity or damage found with photographs, the conducive conditions that raise risk on your property, an assessment of damage potential, and a recommendation. If there is no activity, the report says so and tells you what to fix to keep it that way.

How often, and why twelve months is not arbitrary

AS 3660.2 sets regular inspections at intervals of no more than twelve months, with special inspections at no more than six months where risk warrants it. That interval is also the condition on which most termite management warranties depend — both the installer’s and the product manufacturer’s. Let the interval lapse and you can lose cover you have already paid for.

In Brisbane there is a second reason. Alates — the winged reproductives that start new colonies — swarm from roughly October to March, and swarms have been observed in the region as early as September in a warm year. Swarming is triggered by storms saturating the soil and by the humidity that follows. The sensible time to inspect is before that window, not after.

Why Brisbane sits where it does 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.”

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.

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: 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 climate explains a good deal of it. Brisbane averages 1,065.2 mm of rain a year across 83 rain days, and December to March alone delivers 603.2 mm of it — 57% of the annual total. January averages a maximum of 30.4 °C, and 9am relative humidity sits at 63% across the year, peaking at 66–70% from February through June.

Source: Bureau of Meteorology, Brisbane station 040913, period of record 1999–2026.

The termites that matter in Brisbane

Species	What it does	Where it lives
Coptotermes acinaciformis	The primary structural pest in Brisbane homes. Attacks all timber but especially pine, building galleries through framing and trees and taking out structural integrity from the inside.	Throughout Queensland. Queensland Government describes Coptotermes as the most economically important and widespread subterranean termite.
Schedorhinotermes spp.	Structurally significant and frequently found in Brisbane. Often associated with damp timber and ground contact.	Throughout Queensland.
Cryptotermes brevis West Indian drywood termite	Described by the Queensland Government as the world’s most destructive drywood termite. Needs no ground contact — it lives on the moisture in the timber itself, and damage is restricted to construction timber and furniture. Commonly infests hoop pine, pine, maple, red cedar and silky oak.	Established in many Brisbane suburbs. Spreads mainly inside infested timber and wooden items and can establish in something as small as a picture frame.

We also do not list Mastotermes darwiniensis, the giant northern termite, among local threats. It is Australia’s most destructive species but its range is tropical northern Queensland and northern Australia — not south-east Queensland. Sources: Business Queensland (Department of Agriculture and Fisheries), termite and drywood termite pages.

What an inspection cannot do

An inspection is a visual and instrument-assisted examination of accessible areas at a point in time. It is not a guarantee that a property is free of termites, and no inspector who is being straight with you will tell you otherwise. What it does is find activity and damage where it is visible or detectable, identify the conditions on your property that invite it, and give you a documented basis for deciding what to do next. That is also why the twelve-month interval exists — a single inspection is a snapshot, and protection comes from the sequence.

Frequently asked