[Progress.150] 50 years warranty - what else could you ask for?

On Friday, we have an inspector from TermGuard on site for annual inspection of the termite protection system.

First he climb up into the ceiling area with a big torch. Then he use this Tramex Moisture Meter device to carefully check each and every wall inside the house. This thing cost about $800 each, not cheap!

After that, he walk around the outside of the house and then to the backyard, checking all the timber fences. He paid lots of attention to the half-rotten fence on the southern side. Yes, we know it's very ugly but since the neighbour refused to share the cost, what can we do if that attracts termites? I bet their old house would look more tastier than ours....

At the end, he use a long screw driver to pick/punch a few areas/holes under the root of the 2 big trees in our backyard, looking for termites. Luckily everything was clear and there's no sign of any termite.

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I heard that TermGuard is the only company in the industry that provides 50 years written warranty. We have no choice as it's the termite protection system used by our builder.

I copied this fancy flash demo from their web site, showing how their system works. Basically you pump some chemical into the box which connects to the longs pipes which surrounds the house. Have a look at this old post of mine last year to see what the pipes look like. You can also get further information from this page on their web site.

The 50 years warranty sounds too good to be true. Of course there's always a catch - your house has to be checked by their qualified inspector every year, and every 3 years you have to refill those chemical stuffs, also only by their qualified technicians.

From a different angle, I am actually quite impressed with their business model:

If the customer is afraid of X, we can provide Y years of protection warranty. Under the condition that it has to be inspected by our qualified, professional technician every [month/year], and every Z [months/years] you have to purchase this special ABC product/service from us....

In this case, X=termite, Y=50, Z=3... Which means for every new customer, it brings in 50 years worth of inspection business, plus about 17 years of chemical product sales... Not bad at all!

I am start thinking of different areas, what are the things new house owners would be afraid of? Noise, Leaking/plumbing problems, Landscaping, Gutter Leaf Guard protection, surge protection, ...etc.

May be we can also apply the same thinking to other areas... At work, car, health, computer virus/spyware/malware, ...etc.

This post doesn't sound like it belongs to a house building blog at all, more like a business guide/idea thing... Well, who care? As long as someone can find this helpful, I would be willing to share! There's business ideas everywhere, just depend on whether you can pick it up and do something about it...