Carpenter ants eat wood at a surprisingly fast rate for their size but its not like their gutting your house, it takes years of having a constant and growing carpenter ant infestation to damage your house to the point that it becomes physically unstable. It is best to contact professional carpenter ant exterminator Kitchener in the Greater Toronto Area to declare your home ant-free as soon as possible!
Carpenter ants are a highly destructive species of ant that does not eat wood but does drill through it. They make their nests in damp rotting and wet wood and prefer it to dry wood. However, when a queen is making a new colony she may decide to build it in dry wood for the increased safety.
The biggest issue with carpenter ants is that they are very hard to spot. You can have a carpenter ant infestation for years and not even realize it. They could be crawling around in your walls right now, chewing through your wooden furniture and making a mess of your walls. Eventually they will chew through the whole house and bring it tumbling to the ground, not soon, but also not so far. They are capable of laying waste to surprising structures of wood and can ruin your antiques in a minute.
You can tell you have carpenter ants in a few obvious ways. Worker ants foraging will often travel on the outside of wall, if you see long lines of carpenter ants on your walls then it is guaranteed that you have a very large and very serious infestation to deal with. You can also check your walls and wooden areas like stairs and furniture for small oblong holes with piles of something called Frass. Frass is a word to describe the pile of powdery wood shavings, ant parts and feces that makes up the tiny piles underneath the holes they dig in the wall. This material is carried out by the workers and dropped outside the hole.
Another clear and obvious sign of a major infestation is winged ants. If you see winged ants try your best to kill them because the females are about to become new queens of their own colonies and that can mean a major expansion in the ant population as a dozen queens make new nests. These winged ants appear when a colony reaches maturity. They fly around in a mating dance and then the males die and females tear off their wings. This is why you may find dead winged ants and wings near the floor under your windows. That is likely where they mated.