New build termite protection in Cairns - what you actually bought.
Your builder installed a termite management system because the code made them. Nobody walked you through which one, what it is warranted for, or the landscaping decision in year two that quietly ends the whole thing. This page does.
It is compulsory, and Cairns has no low-risk exemption.
Yes. The National Construction Code Volume Two requires a termite risk management system for new residential buildings containing primary structural elements susceptible to termite attack, and the deemed-to-satisfy path is compliance with AS 3660.1. Cairns is not in any low-risk exemption zone - the whole region carries a high termite hazard, and your building certifier will not sign off without the system in place and documented. What varies is which system your builder chose, whether it protects your frame or only satisfies the code minimum, and whether anyone explained the difference to you. Usually nobody did.
There is a detail in AS 3660.1 worth knowing, because it surprises people. The standard does not promise your house cannot be attacked. It is explicit that the purpose of a termite management system is to deter concealed entry and to force any foraging termites into the open where a regular inspection will find them. That is the actual design intent: not a force field, a detection aid. Which is precisely why the annual inspection is not optional and why the standard says so.
Find your durable notice today.
AS 3660.1 requires a durable notice to be permanently fixed in a prominent location - in practice the meter box or the underside of the kitchen sink cupboard - recording the termite management system installed, the date of installation, the installer, and the date the next inspection is due. It is a small plastic or metal plate and it is the single most useful document about your home that most owners have never looked at. On a new Cairns build, walk to your meter box and find it before handover. If it is not there, that is a defect to raise with the builder, not a formality to shrug at. Photograph it and keep the photo with your warranty paperwork.
Alongside it you want the installer’s AS 3660.1 certificate, the QBCC licence details of whoever did the work (termite management is a licensed class in Queensland, and it is not something a general labourer on the site can legitimately do), and the product documentation. That folder is what a buyer’s conveyancer will ask for in ten years, which is covered on pre-purchase inspections.
If the folder has already gone missing - and on a house bought second-hand it usually has - the paperwork is recoverable. Most new homes in the region are certified by a private building certifier rather than by Cairns Regional Council directly, but the certifier is required to lodge the approval documents with the local government, so a building records search with Cairns Regional Council will generally turn up the approval file and the form 15 and 16 certificates that go with it. It is worth doing before you assume you have no barrier, because a great many owners who believe they have nothing in fact have a certified system and simply lost the envelope.
The choice you get to make once, before the pour.
On a new build, a full physical barrier system - stainless steel mesh such as Termimesh, or a graded granular layer such as Granitgard - usually adds $3,500 to $6,500 to construction depending on slab perimeter and penetration count. An under-slab chemical soil barrier installed at the same stage is typically $2,000 to $3,500. So the up-front gap is $1,500 to $3,000. What that gap buys is the difference between a 50-year certified design life and an eight-year re-treat cycle, and on a 25-year horizon in Cairns the physical barrier almost always wins on total cost. Add the annual AS 3660.2 inspection at $235 to $380 either way.
Run the twenty-five year arithmetic on a home in Edmonton or Smithfield, which is where most of the region’s new stock is going in. Physical barrier at $5,000 up front, nothing to renew, total $5,000. Chemical at $2,800 up front, then a retrofit re-treat at year eight, sixteen and twenty-four at $1,500 to $5,000 each - call it $3,000 a go on a standard slab, so $11,800 across the same period. The physical barrier is $2,200 more expensive on the day you sign and roughly $6,800 cheaper by the time your kids leave home.
The catch is timing and it is absolute: physical barriers go in before the concrete. Miss that window and the conversation is retrofit chemical or a Sentricon baiting system for the rest of the building’s life, at $1,800 to $3,500 to install plus monitoring. If you are reading this while your slab is still a plan on a page, this is the one decision on this page that is worth acting on today. Full comparison at termite barrier types.
The barrier is not the protection. The barrier plus the inspection is.
The opposite - the barrier is the reason you need them. Every AS 3660.1 system, physical or chemical, is warranted on the condition that an AS 3660.2 inspection is carried out at least annually from handover. Skip two years and the manufacturer and installer warranties are gone, and you are holding a barrier with no backing and no evidence it is intact. This is the most common and most expensive mistake new-home owners in Cairns make: the barrier feels like a completed purchase, so the annual inspection feels like an upsell. It is not. It is the maintenance condition of the thing you already paid for.
We see this pattern constantly on estates in Edmonton and Mount Peter. Handover in year one, everyone is delighted, the durable notice says the next inspection is due in twelve months and nobody looks at the meter box again. Year four, the house sells or a lead is found, and the owner discovers the $5,000 system in their slab is now an undocumented lump of stainless steel with no warranty attached. The system still physically works. The promise behind it does not. And your home insurer will not help, because termite damage is excluded - see termite damage and insurance.
The four things new owners do that end it.
Landscaping, almost always, and within the first two years. The barrier is installed to a clean slab edge and then the owner turfs, mulches and plants right up to the house. Mulch banked over the slab edge bridges the barrier entirely - foragers walk over the top of a system you paid thousands for. The other three: a pergola or shade-sail post bolted through the slab and its barrier without re-sealing; a paved or concreted area laid above the slab line so the inspection zone disappears; and an air-conditioning or plumbing penetration cut post-handover and never re-treated. All four are avoidable, all four are common, and all four end warranties.
The fix for all four is the same and it is free: keep a clear, visible, 75 mm-plus inspection zone of exposed slab edge right around the house, and ring your termite installer before anyone drills, trenches or pours anything within a metre of the perimeter. That is the entire maintenance regime. It costs nothing and it is the difference between a barrier and a memory.
Fresh landscaping is an invitation, not a fresh start.
There is a persistent belief on the new estates that a brand-new home has a grace period. It does not. The build itself creates the conditions: disturbed soil, buried form-work timber and offcuts, a stack of scrap under the deck, fresh mulch, new turf being watered daily through a Cairns build-up. Every one of those is a food source or a moisture source, and the termites in the surrounding soil were there before your slab was.
Ask your builder to confirm that all form-work, timber pegs and construction scrap were removed rather than buried or left under the deck. It is an extremely common shortcut and it plants a food source under your own house. On a site backed onto bushland or an old cane headland - which describes a great deal of the Cairns growth corridor - it is the difference between a colony finding your slab in year twelve and finding it in year two.
The same logic covers the rest of the pest load on a new estate build. New homes are not immune to any of it: fresh landscaping brings ants and cockroaches straight in, and the wet season does not care how new your kitchen is. See general pest control and wet season pest control for how we time that around the build-up.
What new-home owners in Cairns ask us.
Can I use my own installer instead of the builder’s?
Before contract, often yes - it is worth asking, and it is worth asking specifically for a physical barrier if the slab has not been poured. After contract, the builder’s subcontractor is generally locked in. What you can always do is get an independent inspection at handover to verify the system was actually installed as certified, which is a few hundred dollars against a system worth thousands.
The estate is on old cane land. Does that matter?
Yes. Old cane country across the southern corridor carries buried organic matter, old stumps and headland timber, and it has been holding moisture for a century. It is not a reason to avoid the estate - most of the region’s growth is on it - but it is a reason to take the physical barrier option seriously and to keep the annual inspection religiously.
When should my first inspection be?
Twelve months from the date on the durable notice, not twelve months from when you moved in - they are often different. Put it in your phone calendar the day you find the notice. In Cairns we book most annuals in the August to September dry, when sub-floors and soil are accessible and readable. See AS 3660 inspections.
Does a steel-framed house need any of this?
Less of it, but not none. A steel frame removes the main meal, but your roof battens, door jambs, architraves, skirtings, kitchen carcasses and flooring are all still cellulose, and Mastotermes will attack cabling sheathing and stored goods regardless of what the frame is made of. The NCC requirement keys off primary structural elements, so a full steel frame changes your compliance position - it does not change your risk to nothing.
Service areas across the Cairns region.
Keep your new-build barrier warranty alive.
Handover verification inspections and annual AS 3660.2 inspections timed to your durable notice, with a dated written report for your warranty folder. $235 to $380 for most Cairns homes. QBCC-licensed termite management, AEPMA member.