What is in your crawl space?

If you are like most homeowners, you never go in your crawl space. Although you think everything is fine with your home, your crawl space can be a cause of health, energy and overall performance of your home.

Having a whole home energy audit and evaluation of your home can help determine if your crawl space and other areas of your home are issue free.

common problems with crawl spaces:

• Moisture - Moisture in your crawl space can cause may problems. Water could be standing in your crawl space and creating moisture problem, which can lead to bacterial growth, rotting wood, and poor air quality. Also, durning a home energy evaluation, we will check to make sure all your pipes and water lines are not causing any problems.
• Critters - Small animails (snakes, mice, bugs, spiders, termites, etc). Animals can cause problems with air quality, chew up your duct work, insulation or even your wood. Most of all, you don't want any of these to enter your home. Making sure your crawl space is air sealed from your conditioned living space of your home will keep these animals out.
• Improper air sealing and insulation - Making sure you have holes and cracks sealed and insulation in the correct spots. Most homes have holes in their flooring that lead to pipes under the sink, bathtubs and other water lines and electric lines. A lot of people have lines for cable and internet that run through the floor to the outside, having these sealed can ensure no air or critters come through.

Crawl spaces can be vented or closed. Most older homes have vented crawl spaces that you close and open depending on the time of year. Most people open their vents to let their crawl space breathe during the summer and then close them to keep cold air out in the winter. These back and forth temperature changes can create problems. Closed crawl spaces are sealed off to the outside of your home. We can evaluate if a crawl space encapsulation is needed for your home. Doing so we add a barrier to the floor of your crawl space creating a clean area from dirt that is within your foundation of your home. We run the plastic material to cover the complete floor of your crawl space sealing all foundation supports and the walls. When we close vent a crawl space we seal all of the vents and any cracks from the outside air. Since air is not entering your crawl space from the vents, we can remove the old insulation from the floor of your home and replace it with by adding it to the exterior walls of your crawl space.

Check out our Case Study: Crawl Space Encapsulation!