Top 9 Signs Your Home Has a Termite Infestation

Quick Answers: Signs of Termite Infestation in Your House

• The most visible signs of a termite infestation are mud tubes on walls or foundations, hollow-sounding timber, and discarded wings near entry points.
• Frass (tiny pellet-shaped droppings) near skirting boards or furniture is a strong indicator of drywood termite activity.
• Doors and windows sticking or warping without obvious moisture changes point to timber frames being eaten from the inside.
• A clicking or tapping sound inside walls is often soldier termites banging their heads to signal the colony, not normal settling noise.
• Never disturb suspected termite workings yourself. Disturbing the colony causes it to scatter deeper into the structure, making treatment harder.

You’re walking through your home and something feels off. A door that used to close cleanly now sticks at the top. A floorboard sounds hollow when you step on it. Paint on one wall looks like it’s bubbling from behind. Any one of these alone is easy to dismiss. Taken together, they’re telling you something.

Termites cause an estimated 1.5 billion dollars in damage to Australian homes every year, and the majority of that damage happens before anyone notices a visible sign. By the time a sign appears on your wall or floor, the colony behind it has often been feeding for months.

This guide covers the nine physical signs of a termite infestation in a house that you should know how to identify. We’ll tell you what each sign means, which termite species causes it, and what you should do when you find it.

If you spot anything on this list, book a termite inspection in Melbourne immediately. Don’t investigate further yourself.

Table of Contents

1. How to Identify a Termite Problem Before Damage Spreads
2. Sign 1: Mud Tubes on Walls, Foundations, or Piers
3. Sign 2: Hollow-Sounding Timber When Tapped
4. Sign 3: Frass (Termite Droppings) Near Skirting Boards
5. Sign 4: Tight-Fitting Doors and Windows
6. Sign 5: Discarded Termite Wings Near Windowsills
7. Sign 6: Blistering or Bubbling Paint on Walls
8. Sign 7: Clicking or Rustling Sounds Inside Walls
9. Sign 8: Visible Tunnelling in Exposed Timber
10. Sign 9: Sagging Floors or Ceilings
11. What to Do If You Spot Any of These Signs
12. Frequently Asked Questions

How to Identify a Termite Problem Before Damage Spreads

Most termite damage is invisible until a colony has been feeding for six months or more. Termites consume timber from the inside out, leaving a paper-thin outer layer intact to maintain humidity inside their workings. That’s why you tap a joist and it sounds hollow. They’ve eaten everything except the surface.

The signs in this guide are physical evidence of an existing infestation. They’re not early warnings. Their confirmation that damage is already happening.

For signs that appear before structural damage is visible, see our guide to early warning signs of termites. The present guide focuses on what you find after a colony has been active in your home long enough to leave traces.

Each sign below comes with a description, the reason it happens, and the species most often responsible. Melbourne’s climate supports several destructive species, most commonly Coptotermes acinaciformis (subterranean, highly destructive), Schedorhinotermes intermedius (subterranean, found in inner Melbourne suburbs), and Cryptotermes brevis (drywood, found in older coastal-adjacent homes in Port Melbourne, St Kilda, and Brighton).

Sign 1: Mud Tubes on Walls, Foundations, or Piers

Mud tubes are the most diagnostic physical sign of a subterranean termite infestation. If you see them, a colony is active.

Subterranean termites build mud tubes to travel between the soil and the timber they’re feeding on. The tubes protect workers from desiccation and predators as they forage above ground. They’re constructed from soil particles, termite saliva, and faecal material, pressed into a tube roughly five to ten millimetres wide.

You’ll find them running up concrete stumps in subfloor spaces, along brick foundation walls, up the inside of garage walls, through weep holes in brickwork, and over concrete slab edges. In subfloor spaces, they sometimes look like thin dirt lines running up toward the bearer. On external walls, they’re more obvious: raised brown channels tracking upward from the ground.

A fresh, active mud tube has a slightly moist appearance. An abandoned tube is dry and crumbles easily. Finding an abandoned tube means a colony was active at some point. Finding a fresh tube means activity is current.

Don’t break open the tube to investigate. Breaking tubes causes workers to retreat and signals the colony to alter its routes. Leave them intact for a licensed inspector to assess.

Species responsible: Primarily Coptotermes acinaciformis and Schedorhinotermes intermedius. Both are highly destructive and common throughout Melbourne.

Book a termite inspection in Melbourne on the same day you find mud tubes. Don’t wait.

Sign 2: Hollow-Sounding Timber When Tapped

Pick up a coin and tap along a skirting board, a door frame, or a floor joist. Solid timber produces a dull, flat knock. Termite-damaged timber produces a hollow, papery knock, sometimes a slight crunch if the damage is severe enough that the surface compresses under the tap.

Termites consume the internal cellulose of timber along the grain, leaving thin external shell intact. This hollowing happens systematically across structural members, including floor bearers, joists, wall studs, and roof rafters.

The floor is often the first place homeowners notice it. A hollow section of floorboard under a rug, a soft spot near a wall, or a section of hallway that sounds different to adjacent boards. These are not rotting boards. Rot softens and darkens timber from the outside. Termite damage hollows it from within, and the surface stays visually intact until the colony has been feeding for a long time.

In Melbourne’s older housing stock, particularly the timber-framed homes built in Northcote, Brunswick, Fitzroy, and Carlton before 1970, subfloor spaces are common and skirting boards run around every room. Running a systematic tap-test around the base of every external wall takes ten minutes and picks up hollow sections that wouldn’t otherwise be visible.

If you find hollow timber in one area, the infestation almost certainly extends beyond that spot. Termites don’t eat a single joist. They work across a zone. Treat a hollow result as evidence of a broader infestation, not a localised problem.

Sign 3: Frass (Termite Droppings) Near Skirting Boards

Frass is the excrement of drywood termites. It appears as tiny pellets, roughly one millimetre in diameter, hexagonal in cross-section, and varies in colour from cream to dark brown depending on the timber species the colony is consuming.

Unlike subterranean termites, which pack their droppings back into their galleries, drywood termites push frass out of small kick-out holes in the timber. You’ll find small piles of these pellets on windowsills, on horizontal surfaces near skirting boards, in kitchen cabinets, or beneath furniture with timber frames.

Frass looks a lot like fine wood dust or sawdust, but with a consistent pellet shape and a slightly gritty texture. Sawdust from a drill is irregular. Frass is uniformly pellet-shaped.

In Melbourne, drywood termite infestations are less common than subterranean, but they do occur in older homes in Port Melbourne, St Kilda, Elwood, and Brighton, where heritage-listed properties use hardwood joinery. Cryptotermes brevis, the West Indian drywood termite, is the primary species responsible.

Finding frass doesn’t mean you have a massive infestation. Drywood termite colonies are smaller than subterranean colonies, often just a few thousand individuals. But they work slowly and quietly inside furniture and joinery, and without a professional assessment, you won’t know the extent until visible damage appears.

Sign 4: Tight-Fitting Doors and Windows (Buckling Frames)

A door or window that used to open freely and now sticks, drags, or requires extra effort to close is worth investigating. Seasonal moisture change does cause timber to swell, but if the problem appears without a significant weather change, termites are a likely cause.

Termite workers feeding on door frames and window frames consume the internal timber structure. As the structural integrity of the frame breaks down, the frame begins to shift slightly under its own load and the load of the wall above it. The frame warps inward or outward, and the door or window no longer sits squarely in its opening.

The misalignment is subtle at first. A door that catches at the top-left corner. A window sash that sticks partway up. As the feeding continues, the warp becomes more pronounced. In severe cases, frames bow visibly or gaps appear in corners where the frame joints pull apart.

In Melbourne homes with brick veneer construction over a timber frame, this sign appears in the internal frames well before any external evidence is visible. The termites work the internal stud, the frame shifts, and the door starts sticking months before any external inspection would reveal damage.

If you have a sticking door in a room adjacent to an external wall, particularly on the ground floor, treat it as a red flag until a technician rules out termite activity.

Sign 5: Discarded Termite Wings Near Windowsills

Finding a pile of small, translucent wings on your windowsill or inside a light fitting is one of the clearest indicators that a termite colony is either inside your home or immediately adjacent to it.

Alates, the reproductive winged termites, shed their wings within minutes of landing after a swarming flight. The wings are shed at a point near entry into the soil or a crevice where the pair attempts to establish a new nest. Wings found inside your home, near window frames, around door thresholds, or beneath light fittings where insects cluster at night, indicate that reproductives entered your home and shed their wings there.

Termite wings are uniform in size, roughly equal in length (both pairs), and have a faint veined pattern. Ant wings are unequal in size. If you’re unsure, photograph them against a white background and send the image to a pest controller for identification.

A single pair of wings means one alate flight entered. A mass of wings means a swarm passed through your home, and potentially multiple pairs established in or near the structure. Either way, it requires professional assessment.

Melbourne’s spring swarming season in October and November generates the highest volume of wing discoveries. Homeowners in Hawthorn, Toorak, and Camberwell, where mature trees stand close to older homes, report wing discoveries every spring. Don’t dismiss it as a quirk of the season. Treat it as evidence of colony establishment nearby.

Sign 6: Blistering or Bubbling Paint on Walls

Paint that blisters, bubbles, or lifts away from a wall surface is usually attributed to moisture. Sometimes it is moisture. But termite workings inside the wall produce exactly the same visible result, and misidentifying the cause leads homeowners to repaint a wall without addressing the colony eating the timber behind it.

Termites maintain high humidity inside their galleries, sometimes 95 to 99 percent relative humidity. When workings are constructed close to a painted internal surface, that humidity transfers through the remaining timber to the paint film. The moisture underneath the paint lifts it, producing blisters or a soft, papery feel when you press the wall surface.

The difference between termite-related bubbling and standard moisture bubbling is location and pattern. Moisture blistering from a pipe leak concentrates around the source and spreads outward. Termite blistering follows the path of timber framing inside the wall: along vertical studs, horizontal noggings, and diagonals. If the blistering tracks along structural lines rather than spreading from a point, termites are more likely.

Test a blister by pressing it gently. If the paint beneath is intact and the blister collapses and re-inflates, moisture is the cause. If pressing the blister reveals a paper-thin void and you can feel the surface crumple slightly, termites have consumed the substrate below the paint.

Do not cut open the wall yourself. Alert a pest controller. Exposing termite workings without a treatment plan in place causes the colony to retreat and scatter, making treatment significantly more difficult.

Sign 7: Clicking or Rustling Sounds Inside Walls

Press your ear to a wall and listen. A dry clicking or faint rustling from inside the wall cavity is not your building settling. It is the sound of an active termite colony.

Soldier termites communicate alarm signals by vibrating their heads against tunnel walls and by tapping with their mandibles. This produces a faint clicking or soft rattling sound that carries through thin wall surfaces. Workers moving through galleries create a lower-level continuous rustling, similar to static from a radio at very low volume.

These sounds are loudest at night when background noise drops. In a quiet house, place your ear flat against a wall near skirting boards or press a stethoscope or drinking glass against the surface to amplify the sound. Active workings produce intermittent clicks and a faint movement sound.

In Melbourne homes, this sign is often reported in walls adjacent to hot water systems, in walls shared with the garage, and in walls on the south-facing side of the house where moisture accumulates in cooler months. Coptotermes acinaciformis soldiers are particularly audible because they vibrate vigorously when disturbed.

The first time a homeowner reports this symptom, they often describe it as “a ticking from inside the wall” or “something moving behind the plasterboard.” They’re right on both counts.

Sign 8: Visible Tunnelling in Exposed Timber

In subfloor spaces, garages, sheds, and any area with exposed structural timber, visible mud-packed galleries running along the grain of the wood are unmistakable evidence of active or past termite feeding.

Subterranean termites pack their galleries with mud and faecal material as they feed, maintaining humidity and protecting the colony from predators. These mud-packed channels follow the grain of the timber and branch as the colony extends its feeding zone. Cross-sectioning a heavily damaged bearer reveals a honeycomb of these channels, sometimes with workers still inside.

Drywood termites leave clean, unlined galleries without the mud packing. These hollow channels run across the grain and are smooth-walled. Finding clean, smooth tunnels in furniture timber, window framing, or roof rafters points to a drywood species rather than subterranean.

In Melbourne’s subfloor spaces, access via a manhole cover reveals bearers and joists that have been worked by termites. Fresh workings have a moist, dark appearance. Older, abandoned galleries are dry and light-coloured. A technician with a moisture meter and Termatrac radar device locates active sections that aren’t yet visible to the eye.

If you inspect your subfloor and find anything resembling mud-packed channels on timber, exit the space without disturbing anything and call a licensed inspector. Torch light and a quick look is enough to confirm you need professional assessment. Don’t probe, poke, or treat the area yourself.

Sign 9: Sagging Floors or Ceilings

A floor that bounces underfoot, a ceiling that has developed a visible sag, or a deck board that flexes too much when you walk across it are all structural failure signs consistent with significant termite damage.

By the time a floor sags or a ceiling deflects visibly, the structural members carrying the load have lost a substantial portion of their cross-sectional strength. Floor joists, bearers, ceiling rafters, or the lining timbers behind plasterboard have been hollowed enough that they can no longer carry their design load without deflecting.

This is not an early sign. This is evidence of a colony that has been feeding for one to three years, possibly longer. The cost of repair at this stage includes structural timber replacement, plasterboard repair, and flooring reinstatement on top of the termite treatment cost.

In Melbourne, sagging floors are most commonly reported in pre-1970 timber homes in Collingwood, Richmond, Abbotsford, Fitzroy North, and Brunswick, where raised subfloor construction puts bearers and joists directly accessible to soil-dwelling termites. A sagging floor in these homes needs a structural assessment alongside the termite treatment, as the compromised members require replacement before the floor loading is safe.

A springy deck is often the first structural sign homeowners notice, because deck boards are thinner and the deflection becomes obvious underfoot. Check deck boards and the posts and bearers below them for mud tubes and hollow-sounding responses to tapping.

What to Do If You Spot Any of These Signs

Stop. Don’t spray. Don’t probe. Don’t disturb the area.

Every one of these nine signs warrants a professional inspection, not a DIY treatment attempt. Here’s why: subterranean termites respond to disturbance by evacuating their current workings and establishing new galleries deeper in the structure. A homeowner who breaks open a mud tube or applies surface spray to visible workings pushes the colony out of detectable range and hands it another six months of undisturbed feeding before the next inspection.

What you should do instead:

1. Photograph the sign clearly. Note the location: which room, which wall, which surface, how high above the floor.
2. Check the immediate surrounding area without touching anything. Are there mud tubes on adjacent walls? Is timber hollow within 30 centimetres of the sign?
3. Call a licensed pest controller with AS 3660.2 inspection accreditation. In Melbourne, that means a technician using detection equipment, including a Termatrac T3i radar device, thermal camera, and calibrated moisture meter, not just a visual inspection.
4. Don’t attempt to identify the species yourself. Treatment decisions differ by species, moisture levels, and colony size. A licensed assessment is the only reliable basis for a treatment recommendation.

At Tom’s Pest Control Melbourne, our inspections comply with Australian Standard AS 3660.2 and cover every accessible area of your property, from roof void to subfloor. We use a full suite of detection equipment and provide a written report with findings, risk assessment, and treatment options.

Spotted any of these signs? Do not delay. Our termite specialists in Melbourne assess and treat the problem fast. Call (03) 9034 5957 or contact us at 24 York Street, Prahran, VIC 3181.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I tell if I have termites in my walls?

The most reliable home checks are the tap test (coin tapping along skirting boards and door frames for a hollow sound), listening for faint clicking from inside walls at night, and checking for blistering or bubbling paint that doesn’t correspond to a known moisture source. Any of these signs warrants a professional inspection with radar and thermal detection equipment.

What does termite damage look like in wood?

In exposed timber, termite damage presents as mud-packed channels running along the grain (subterranean species) or clean smooth galleries without mud packing (drywood species). The external surface often looks intact while the interior has been hollowed. Pressing on damaged timber produces a soft, papery feel rather than the resistance of solid wood.

What are mud tubes on walls from termites in Australia?

Mud tubes are shelter tunnels built by subterranean termites to travel between soil and their food source. They’re five to ten millimetres wide, brown or grey, and constructed from soil, saliva, and faecal material. Finding mud tubes on any wall, pier, foundation, or surface indicates active subterranean termite activity and requires immediate professional assessment.

What does hollow-sounding wood mean for termites?

Hollow-sounding wood when tapped with a coin or knuckle indicates that the internal cellulose of the timber has been consumed by termites, leaving only the outer shell. The hollow sound is the absence of internal structure. This is not rot, which softens timber from the outside. Termite damage hollows it from within while leaving the surface visually intact.

What are termite droppings (frass) and how do I identify them?

Frass is the hexagonal, pellet-shaped excrement of drywood termites, roughly one millimetre in diameter and varying from cream to dark brown. It accumulates in small piles beneath kick-out holes drilled by the termites in infested timber. It looks similar to fine sawdust but with a uniform pellet shape rather than the irregular flakes of sawdust from cutting or drilling.

What should I do after finding signs of termites in my Melbourne home?

Don’t disturb the area. Photograph the signs and their location. Call a licensed pest controller immediately for an AS 3660.2-compliant inspection. Do not apply sprays, open walls, or probe workings yourself. Disturbance causes the colony to scatter into areas that are harder to treat and detect. Professional assessment is the first and only correct step.