Woodworm advice & guides

Each guide answers one woodworm question in plain English. Start with the signs of woodworm if you have just found holes, because that tells you what to do next.

Costs come from named public sources, and we say so on each page. However, no guide replaces a survey, so use these pages to ask better questions.

If you have just found holes, read the guides on signs, active versus historic damage and what to do next. If you are comparing quotes, start with the cost guide and the DIY versus professional post. Species guides help when you want to name the beetle, and the dry rot posts help when damp is involved.

Every guide links to related pages, so you can follow a topic without searching. Because woodworm advice changes little from year to year, older posts stay useful, although we update prices when sources change.

If you are short of time, read the signs of woodworm first. It takes five minutes and it tells you what to do next. Then pick the guide that matches your worry.

New guides appear here as we publish them. Each post shows its date, so you can see when we last updated it. If a guide answers your question, share the link with a neighbour or a landlord, because many people have the same worry. Costs and rules change, so we check prices against their sources when we revise a post. Check back each month, because we add posts on species, treatment methods and costs.