Home gardening enthusiasts who have some garden furniture advice to give will readily tell you to buy teak wood furniture as a top recommendation for reasons that go beyond just its appearance. Teak wood furniture looks great, but another advantage to it this popular wood for outdoor furniture is its apparent natural repellent properties to pests.
So is it true that teak wood is pest-proof?
The short answer is no. Teak wood as used in outdoor furniture is not pest-proof, testimony to which fact is how you’d find wasps making their nests in any corner they can find on some outdoor structures including wood, which they appear to have a preference for. Older houses with their elegant wooden frames that embellish doorways, roofs, etc, are particularly loved by wasps, so too outdoor wooden furniture that includes teak wood. This means if you see them about it may be good to hire a Birmingham pest control company, or one more local to you, as soon as possible.
So where does the apparent myth come from then?
Pests such as wasps aren’t really that much of a physical threat to the furniture or other outdoor wooden structures. So while you definitely need to be careful not to catch one of those painful and sometimes multiple wasp stings, your teak outdoor furniture and other outdoor furniture pieces won’t be at risk of physical harm.
The pest which poses a physical threat to the structure and integrity of teak and other wood furniture is the notorious termite. Termites don’t only invade wood, but they invade it by essentially eating into it to carve out a nest for their colony.
Now, interestingly enough, any gardening enthusiast who owns teak outdoor furniture and is able to compare that with other types of wood used in their outdoor furniture, tell a story of how termites seem to stay away from the teak wood pieces. The pesky critters might invade the other pieces made of other common outdoor furniture garden woods, but rarely, if ever, do they chew holes into the teak wood pieces.
This is where the myth originates, but it’s exactly that – a myth.
It’s not that teak wood is pest-proof. Rather, termites appear to be a little bit more sophisticated in their taste palate than we might give them credit for. They simply prefer pretty much all other types of wood to teak wood.
In the same way that there are certain garden flowers we all know aren’t favourites among snakes, now we know that teak wood isn’t a favoured wood variety among termites.
While the termite’s natural instincts can perhaps be vaunted for this clear demonstration of some taste sophistication, the same can’t be said about their taste in furniture. Teak wood pieces are generally always easy on the eye, coming out great if designed by some of the best in the business and the natural properties of teak wood just make it a great variety of wood to work within building both indoor furniture base structures and outdoor furniture such as garden chairs, tables, benches, planters, etc.
To be on the safe side, make sure there are some other wood varieties in what the termites would probably refer to as your alfresco, garden buffet so that they’ll stay away from your precious teak wood pieces, or ensure that you have pest control in ga, and other regions to hand so that you can get rid of any termite problems should they arise.