Termite durable notices: what they must record and where they go

A durable notice is a permanent label fixed to a building recording how that building is protected from termites. The National Construction Code requires one to be permanently fixed in a prominent location where a termite management system has been installed, and the word durable is doing real work: the notice has to still be legible years later, in a meter box, in Australian conditions, to somebody who has never met you.

Its purpose is continuity. The notice is very often the only artefact that survives a change of owner, a change of pest controller and the loss of every piece of paper in between. An operator who opens a meter box and finds a legible notice knows what system is in the building, when it went in and when it is due for attention. One who finds nothing starts from an inspection and a guess.

It is also the cheapest piece of compliance you will ever do, and the one most reliably skipped at the end of a long installation.

The meter box is the conventional location for a termite durable notice and should be your default. It is external, it is where every trade and every inspector already looks, and it survives renovation better than almost anywhere else in a house.

The inside of the kitchen sink cupboard door is the common second location, and fixing a duplicate there is good practice. It covers the case where the meter box is replaced, repainted or relocated, and it puts the notice somewhere the occupant will actually come across it.

Fix it where it will not be papered over. A notice behind a switchboard cover, under a bin, or on a surface due to be painted is a notice installed and lost in the same visit.

A durable notice has to carry enough for the next person to act on it without any other document in front of them.

The reader of a durable notice is a future inspector, a conveyancer, or a homeowner three owners removed from the one who paid you. Abbreviations that are obvious inside your business are meaningless in a meter box eight years from now.

Name the system in terms someone else can verify. A notice that says a chemical barrier was installed to the perimeter and to identified penetrations tells the next inspector where to look; one that says treated does not. Where a system is partial — perimeter only, or a slab penetration treatment with no perimeter component — say so, because the alternative is an inspector assuming coverage that was never there.

Print it on stock that will last. Paper in a plastic sleeve is not a durable notice; two summers in a west-facing meter box will settle the question.

The life expectancy on a durable notice comes from the chemical's APVMA-approved label, not from a rule of thumb. Soil-applied chemical barriers are generally described in terms of a service life of several years — the range commonly discussed runs up to around eight — but the figure that belongs on the notice is the one the specific product's label supports, and it varies with the product, the soil and the application.

That number is also a commitment. It sets the client's expectation of when the barrier needs renewing, and it will be read back to you if activity turns up earlier than it promised. Take it from the label in front of you on the day, and record the product name and batch alongside it in your own records so the figure can be traced later.

Life expectancy is not inspection frequency, and confusing the two lines is a common and expensive error. A barrier with years of life left still needs its annual inspection — that is what keeps warranties alive and what catches the bridge or breach the barrier was never going to cover.

Photograph the notice in place, with enough surrounding context to show where it is fixed. The notice is a physical artefact in a building you do not control; the photograph is your evidence that it existed and was installed, and it takes ten seconds.

Record the location against the property record, not just in the job notes. Meter box, front left of the driveway and duplicate inside the sink cupboard are the two lines that save the next technician a ten-minute search on a job they are already running late for. When the system is later topped up, recharged or replaced, the notice has to be updated too — and knowing where it lives is what makes that actually happen.

Keep the notice's contents in your own system as structured data, not only as an image. If a product is later reviewed or a batch is queried, you want to answer which properties carry it without opening a thousand photographs.

On a new build the durable notice is part of handover, alongside the certificate of installation and, in Queensland, the aspect certificate that goes to the building certifier. Fix the notice before the builder's final inspection rather than after: once the site is closed and handed over, arranging access to fix a label is disproportionately painful.

At resale the notice is often the first thing a pre-purchase timber pest inspector records as evidence of previous treatment. A legible notice with your business name on it puts you in front of a new owner who is about to need an annual inspection — a rare case where a compliance obligation is also a lead source.

A missing notice cuts the other way. An inspector who finds no notice reports that no evidence of previous treatment was found, regardless of what you actually installed, and the client who paid for that system has no way to prove it exists.

The failures are mundane and almost entirely preventable by making the notice a step in the job rather than an afterthought.

Durable notice requirements come from the National Construction Code and from the AS 3660 series. AS 3660 is a copyrighted work sold by Standards Australia; the current edition of the standard and the current NCC volume are the authoritative sources for exactly what a notice must carry, and both are revised. Some states add requirements on top — confirm with your state regulator.

This is general information, not legal or engineering advice. Never take a chemical's life expectancy, application rate or re-entry period from anywhere other than the current APVMA-approved label for the product in your hand.