There is a persistent belief along the Victorian coast that salt air keeps termites away. It does not. Coastal homes get termites, and the reason is usually sitting in the back yard rather than in the house itself.
The addition is the risk, not the building
Walk a typical older coastal house and you will find the same history. The original place went up decades ago on timber stumps with an open subfloor. Since then a deck has been added, then a pergola, then retaining sleepers to hold a garden bed, then a screen or privacy wall. Each one went in at a different time, usually by a different trade, and frequently with posts set straight into the ground and no barrier underneath.
That is a direct bridge from soil to structure, and it bypasses whatever protection the original house had. A property can be genuinely low risk on paper and have a live problem in a deck frame nobody has looked under in fifteen years.
What coastal conditions actually change
Sandy soils drain quickly, which affects how a chemical barrier behaves over time and how often it wants rechecking. It does not reduce termite activity. Meanwhile irrigation on coastal gardens, often running daily through summer to keep anything alive in sand, puts steady moisture exactly where you least want it, against the footings and under the deck.
Add a house that sits closed and unventilated for months and the subfloor stays damper than an occupied home would.
Coptotermes does not announce itself
Coptotermes acinaciformis is the species doing the damage in Victoria, and it eats from the inside of the timber outward. Surfaces stay intact. The first sign is usually mechanical rather than visual: a skirting that gives under a thumb, a deck board with unexpected movement, a door frame that has developed play.
On a house you visit a few weeks a year, nobody is around to notice those small changes early.
What to ask for on a coastal inspection
Make sure the deck, pergola posts and any retaining timber are explicitly included, not just the house. Ask for the subfloor and roof void where access allows, and ask for the report to state plainly what could not be reached. On a pre-purchase inspection this matters even more, because the deck is where the money is.
The pattern repeats right along the coast. Through the Bellarine the older beach houses carry exactly this profile, and anyone doing termite inspections around Ocean Grove and Barwon Heads starts at the decking and the retaining sleepers rather than the walls.
If your place is on stumps and has had anything added to it over the years, an annual check is the sensible baseline. Salt air is not doing the job for you.
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