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BORA-CARE®
Bora-Care Information:
Bora-Care And Pretreats At A Glance
Easy to use. Impossible to beat. The Pro’s best weapon for making a killing.
Bora-Care is the fastest growing termite pretreatment in the industry. It is the preferred choice for professionals who want to strengthen their reputation for dependability, while building profitability that can be counted on year after year. Thousands of pest control companies are using Bora-Care to re-enter the pretreatment market. Bora-Care is a powerful, effective preventative termite treatment. By implementing Bora-Care in your program, you’ll tap into a tremendous source of new customers for both termite renewals and general pest accounts.
Use this spreadsheet to determine how pretreats could improve your business.
Average Big Ticket Sales:
Bora-Care and Pretreats at a Glance:
Target Pest:
Bora-Care is proven effective to kill and prevent:
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12/25 BoraShield™ Warranty
The new BoraShield 12-25 warranty offers coverage to registered pest control companies on five levels. The first level is a subterranean termite warranty of 12 years for Bora-Care applications. In Levels 2 and 3, the warranty extends to whole house treatments covering drywood termites, wood destroying insects and decay fungi. Level 4 applies to coverage against mold when using Bora-Care with Mold-Care. Level 5 combines the coverage of Levels 3 and 4 for complete whole house protection.
Under the BoraShield program, Levels 1-3 cover product replacement, labor and damage repair up to $2500 for a period of 12 years. The mold protection in Levels 4 and 5 covers product replacement for 25 years.
Level One: Subterranean Termite Pretreatment • Coverage against subterranean termites for a 1+1 (one part Bora-Care to one part water) dilution of Bora-Care used in a two-foot band termite pretreatment barrier.
Level Two: Whole House Drywood Pretreatment • Includes a whole house pretreatment using a 1+5 dilution of water and Bora-Care, covering drywood termites, wood destroying beetles, carpenter ants and fungal decay.
Level Three: Combination Pretreatment • Combines the coverage of both Levels One and Two for unprecedented warranty protection.
Level Four: Whole House Pretreatment with Mold-Care® • Provides an additional 25-year product replacement warranty on mold, and is offered only to PMPs who are participating in the Mold-Care program and are treating homes using Bora-Care with Mold-Care.
Level Five: Total Whole House Pretreatment • Combines Levels Three and Four. Delivers whole house coverage as described above for subterranean & drywood termites, wood destroying insects, decay fungi and mold when using a 1+1 dilution of Bora-Care in a two-foot perimeter pretreatment barrier plus a 1+5 dilution of Bora-Care with Mold-Care in a whole house pretreatment.
A Closer Look - How Does Bora-Care Work?
The active ingredient in Bora-Care is a borate salt. Borate salts work by taking advantage of a unique feature in the biology of termites, ants and other insects. If ingested by ants, beetles or termites, the insect becomes unable to extract nutrition from its food and starves to death. And because of this unique mode of action, insects cannot develop a resistance, ever.
Bora-Care works differently than most other insecticides, termiticides and even other borate products on the market today. For starters, it isn’t applied to the soil but to the structure itself. Secondly, it isn’t just a repellent or a bait but a little bit of each. Bora-Care’s unique patented blend of glycols in combination with a borate salt provides results that are hard to beat. As soon as beetles and ants attempt to consume treated wood they die. Subterranean termites won’t even try to eat treated wood and if they attempt to build a tube on treated wood, the termites start to die. This alerts the termite colony and they abandon the wood. (For more on the background of how Bora-Care works, read The Science Behind Bora-Care.)
Treat the Wood, Not the Soil.Bora-Care is applied directly onto wood surfaces. Bora-Care then penetrates the wood, protecting it throughout. Because the active ingredient in Bora-Care is a mineral salt, it doesn’t break down over time, so it remains in the wood for the life of the wood, providing long-term protection. By keeping the wood sealed or protected from moisture, as in the wall voids of a structure, you eliminate the need for retreatment. Soil treatments are not only more difficult to apply; they lose their effectiveness over time. Then a costly retreatment becomes necessary. Unlike soil treatments, Bora-Care is not pumped into the ground and poses no threat to lakes, rivers, aquifers or the environment. Bora-Care can even be used on lakeside homes where soil termiticides may be prohibited. Bora-Care’s active ingredient is a natural mineral salt called Disodium Octaborate Tetrahydrate (DOT) which contains the element boron. Boron is an element (chemical symbol B) on the periodic table that is already present in the environment – not only in the ecosystems outside of your home – but also in many of the products you use inside such as soaps and cosmetics. Boron is also found in many of the vegetables we eat.
What Does The Research Say?
Twelve years of efficacy studies and treatments in the field since 1990 have shown Bora-Care’s ability to prevent termites and other wood-destroying insects from consuming wood or tubing over treated wood to reach untreated wood. Bora-Care simply eliminates wood as a food source. In addition, hundreds of studies have confirmed the effectiveness of borates as a preservative, including more than 40 studies confirming its wood-protecting power.
Pretreatments can be done quickly; Infestations are handled with easePretreating a home for subterranean termites with Bora-Care is fast and efficient and there is no need for the construction crew to leave the job site.
Use Bora-Care on new construction. For termite pretreatments, Bora-Care can be applied directly to the wood with a portable backpack sprayer or a tank sprayer. Simply spray a two-foot tall continuous barrier onto all structural materials in contact with the foundation. This includes walls, piers, interior slab or basement walls, plumbing penetrations, pipe chases, bath traps, and any other foundation penetrations. This insures that all termite entry-points are treated. Or use it as a whole-house treatment to prevent infestations of drywood termites, wood destroying beetles, decay fungi and to provide general pest protection.
Bora-Care is Up to the Codes
In addition to EPA registration, Bora-Care wood treatments are HUD-allowed and listed for use under the 2006 International Residential Code, Section R320 Protection Against Subterranean Termites. Only Bora-Care’s EPA-registered label allows it to be used on wood as a stand-alone two-foot barrier termite pretreatment. Bora-Care also meets the sill plate end-cut requirements set by building codes and the American Wood-Preservers’ Association (AWPA M4).
Click here for We Know Codes flyer.
A Closer Look
Pretreats are the best way to grow your business
In plain terms, you can be profitable as a pest management company because Bora-Care works. More specifically, after years of using soil treatments that are disruptive to construction schedules and less effective grade formulas, pest management companies are discovering Bora-Care is the most efficient, cost-effective termiticide. It is a great way to sell your pest control business to builders looking to satisfy homeowners.
Nisus’ best pest control companies’ benchmarks for conversion are 90% renewal on termite contracts, 55% conversion to general pest contracts
The conversion numbers are as impressive as the product. Because pest control companies have the opportunity to contact homeowners and convert treatments into termite renewals and general pest control contracts, think of it has a built-in lead generation program and a way for pest management companies to grow their businesses quickly.
Pretreatments can be done IN ONE TRIP
Pretreatments are fast and efficient. Bora-Care can be applied with a portable backpack sprayer or tank sprayer. You just create a two-foot horizontal and vertical continuous barrier everywhere the foundation meets the structural materials of the home. With Bora-Care, there are no weather delays, unlike soil treatments that can’t be applied in rain. Bora-Care only needs to be applied once, which means you not only save time, but also only have to make one trip, and with the rising cost of gas, you save money, too.
An easy sell to builders
Builders understand the value of Bora-Care. They appreciate the role it plays in securing a quality inspection. They will also like the fact that there is no need for anyone to leave the job site and no need to coordinate schedules with cement or soil workers. The result is that it saves them an entire day of their building cycle.
12 years of efficacy studies
More than 300,000 effectively treated homes can’t be wrong. Since 1990, we’ve shown that Bora-Care keeps wood from being a food source for termites. Bora-Care prevents subterranean termites from tubing across treated wood. In addition, a study by Louisiana State University demonstrated that even Formosan termites can't tube over or survive on concrete treated with Bora-Care.
What is Bora-Care
Disodium Octaborate Tetrahydrate. It’s a fancy way to say “DOT”, Bora-Care’s active ingredient. More simply stated, Bora-Care is a combination of the naturally found mineral borate and a patented mixture of glycol-based components that easily absorb into the porous fibers of wood and draw the borates with it. And since borates don’t break down, the protection from termites and their ability to tube over wood and cement remains for the life of the wood. In addition, this patented product provides you with a low toxicity solution. And that means that Bora-Care can be used with confidence in and around homes, apartments, schools, hospitals, kennels, farm buildings, trailers, warehouses, non-food areas of supermarkets, restaurants and food processing plants.
The Science Behind Bora-Care
Bora-Care is a low toxicity wood preservative that has a low environmental impact. It protects wood and whole structures from most wood destroying organisms including subterranean termites, Formosan termites, drywood termites, wood destroying beetles, carpenter ants, and decay fungi.
The active ingredient is the natural borate salt and micronutrient disodium octaborate tetrahydrate (DOT). DOT is a natural form of elemental boron, which is essential for the healthy growth of plants and believed important in human calcium metabolism. Because animals and humans simply take what they need from their diet and rapidly excrete any excess via the kidneys, DOT has a low acute toxicity and Bora-Care is about half as toxic as sodium chloride or table salt (in a laboratory setting), but it’s very effective against insects and fungi that do not have the same excretion mechanisms. DOT maximizes the solubility, the rate of dissolution and the boric oxide content to give a borate active ingredient far superior to traditional boric acid or borax. At the levels used in Bora-Care applications, it prevents pest infestation by inhibiting pest metabolism on a cellular basis. The tetrahydroxyborate anion forms a chelate complex with the cis-adjacent hydroxyl groups in the ribose sugar of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD), with the cationic nitrogen of the nicotinamide moiety providing electrostatic stabilization of the chelate. In this configuration, NAD and NADP cannot be used by the dehydrogenase enzymes of glycolysis, the pentose phosphate pathway or the tricarboxylic acid pathway, and so the cellular energy generating mechanisms, including adenosine triphosphate production, are shut down.
This enhanced borate salt is combined with a patented mixture of alkylene and polyalkylene diols for superior penetration and improved efficacy. The resulting borester compounds have superior penetration into dry wood because diffusion can take place at a lower wood moisture content than if the active ingredient was by itself occurring at above 15% moisture content. But more importantly, this results in much higher efficacy against wood destroying organisms, especially against subterranean and drywood termites. As a result, Bora-Care is the only borate material that is EPA-registered as a primary termite pretreatment in new construction and provides by far the best remedial treatment against drywood termites.