Bora-Care Termite Treatment: What It Is and When It Works

Bora-Care is a borate wood treatment for termites: a liquid sprayed onto bare lumber that makes the wood itself toxic to termites and other wood-destroying insects. It works best at the framing stage of a new home, before the walls are closed in, and it only protects bare wood that stays dry.

That makes it one of the most useful tools for protecting a new build in Central Texas, and the wrong tool for most existing homes. Here is what Bora-Care is, how a pre-construction treatment is done, how long it lasts, and where its limits are.

What Is Bora-Care?

Bora-Care is made by Nisus Corporation and registered with the EPA (Reg. No. 64405-1). Its active ingredient is disodium octaborate tetrahydrate, a borate salt at 40 percent. Borates are compounds of boron, a naturally occurring element. The rest of the concentrate is a glycol-based carrier.

Borates work as a stomach poison. Termites that feed on treated wood take in the borate and die, but it is slow-acting and does not repel them. In one laboratory study, more than 90 percent of Formosan termites feeding on borate-treated material died within 16 days. The Bora-Care label covers subterranean termites (including Formosan), drywood and dampwood termites, carpenter ants, powderpost and other wood-boring beetles, and the decay fungi that cause wood rot.

How Is Bora-Care Applied in New Construction?

For a slab-foundation home, the label spells out the pre-construction treatment in detail:

• Mix: one part water to one part Bora-Care for subterranean termites.
• Plates and studs: one coat on all sill and base plates, plus the bottom 2 feet of every stud on walls that sit on the slab.
• Plumbing penetrations: the pipes coming up through the slab get sprayed 2 feet high, along with at least 6 inches of slab around each one.
• Bath traps: the open area around tub drains is treated too.
• Timing: after framing is finished and no more framing changes are planned, such as after the final framing inspection.

The timing matters more than most homeowners realize. Once drywall, paint, or sealer goes on, Bora-Care can no longer reach the wood. The treatment window on a new build is a few weeks at the framing stage.

Texas rules specifically allow this approach. Under the Texas Administrative Code (4 TAC §7.173), a borate treatment of the framing can be used in place of a full soil treatment for a new home, as long as it reaches at least 2 feet up from the slab and the product label covers bath traps and plumbing penetrations. Bora-Care’s label does both.

How Long Does Bora-Care Last?

As long as the wood stays dry. The label describes treatment as permanent provided the treated wood is not exposed to rain, moisture, or ground contact, and University of Florida IFAS puts protected borate treatment at 10 years or more, stable for the life of the lumber when it is kept out of the weather. In long-term field research, borate-treated lumber kept out of the rain performed as well as traditional pressure-treated wood after ten years.

The catch is water. Borates dissolve, so repeated rain, standing water, or soil contact washes them out of the wood. That is why Bora-Care is used on interior framing and not on fence posts or deck footings.

What Are the Limits of Bora-Care?

• Bare wood only. The label allows application only where there is no paint, stain, or sealer. In a finished home, most of the framing is behind drywall where a spray cannot reach it.
• It does not treat the soil. The label prohibits applying it directly to soil. It protects the wood, not the ground around your foundation.
• Termites can go around it. NC State Extension notes that subterranean termites can still enter through gaps like expansion joints and reach untreated wood such as baseboards or trim.
• It is slow. Borates are a stomach poison, not a contact killer. They protect wood over time rather than wiping out an active colony overnight.
• It is not “non-toxic.” The label carries a CAUTION signal word, warns that it is harmful if absorbed through skin, and requires gloves, eye protection, and covered skin during application. No one should be in the treated area until the spray has soaked in. Borates have low acute toxicity compared with many pesticides, but they still need to be handled by trained applicators.

Bora-Care vs Termidor: Which One Does Your Home Need?

They solve different problems. The right choice depends mostly on whether the walls are still open:

Feature	Bora-Care	Termidor
What gets treated	The wood itself	The soil around and under the foundation
Best timing	New construction, at the framing stage	Existing homes, or as a soil treatment
Active ingredient	Disodium octaborate tetrahydrate (borate)	Fipronil
How it works	Termites that eat treated wood die over days to weeks	Termites cannot detect it, pass through it, and spread it through the colony
Main limitation	Needs bare, dry wood that stays dry	Needs access to the soil around the structure

For a house that is already built, Texas A&M notes that borate sprays offer only partial protection, because so much of the wood is covered. That is where a soil treatment like Termidor, the number one conventional termite treatment in the U.S., does the heavy lifting.

How We Use Bora-Care

If you are building a new home, our pre-construction termite treatments protect it from the start. We perform stud and foundation treatments, and our stud treatments use Bora-Care to treat the wood from the bottom plate up, along with the plumbing penetrations. Pre-construction treatments come with a five-year warranty.

For existing homes, we inspect first and then treat with Termidor around the perimeter, backed by a one-year warranty that is renewable yearly. Both services are part of our termite control in Leander and termite control in Austin. Building soon? Call (512) 267-0812 before the drywall goes up, while the framing is still bare. To learn how subterranean termites get into Central Texas homes in the first place, see our termite identification guide.

Sources

• Bora-Care label, EPA Reg. No. 64405-1 (accepted Sept. 2025)
• Texas Administrative Code, 4 TAC §7.173: Termite treatment standards
• Texas A&M AgriLife Extension: Termite control and prevention
• University of Florida IFAS: Termite prevention with borates
• NC State Extension: Termite prevention approaches for new construction
• National Pesticide Information Center: Boric acid and borates
• Gentz and Grace (2006), borate efficacy against Formosan termites