Is your crawl space working properly? In our area the crawl space is popular and a popular place for problems. From critters to wet insulation these spaces are almost never right. Here are some posts that might help you get your crawl space in order.
Your crawl space is impacting your home comfort.
Keep the critters out of your crawl space by encapsulating it.
Green term defined: Encapsulated Crawl Space.
Should you vent your crawl space?
If your crawl space looks like this:
then your indoor air quality is suffering. You are also paying too much to heat and cool your home. Vented crawl spaces usually have insulation located in the joist spaces. This insulation gets pulled away from the heated surface by moisture in the space, which opens up air gaps and reduces any insulation value at all. The space usually has high humidity levels promoting mold growth. The heating and cooling vents running in that space usually have minimal insulation allowing for condensation to occur in the ductwork, again impacting indoor air quality and efficiency of the HVAC system.
Instead of a vented crawl space in our mixed humid climate, you should have a conditioned crawl space – like this one. Here is an example of an excellently sealed space.
My community’s wellbeing is our main concern, so give us a call for some great referrals to businesses that you can trust. If you are looking to build your home or business, read this post about how to achieve a healthy building through proper HVAC installation.
If your home has a crawl space with plastic laying loosely on the floor and insulation above your head inside the floor joists – you are wasting energy, have poor indoor-air-quality, and could be growing mold.
In our mixed-humid climate, we should seal and condition our crawl spaces. There should not be insulation inside of the floor joist, but should be on the walls and on the floor if possible. There should be a small supply from your heating and cooling system to create positive pressure. These strategies reduce your annual energy use, protect your indoor-air-quality pushing moisture and radon out, and protects against critters getting into your home.
I am helping this home owner fix a problem left for them by the previous owners of a newly purchased home. In our mixed humid climate, crawl spaces should not be vented, but it has been done for years by builders that do not understand building science. This home had the added feature of a fan pulling in warm moist air into a cool crawl space. What you can see in this picture below is water pulling the insulation apart as it actually is raining in the crawl space from moisture condensing on the cool surfaces. While not every vented crawl space is wet, almost all have enough moisture to allow for mold growth. A vented crawl space in a home with a forced air HVAC system usually pulls the make up ‘fresh’ air from that crawl space into your living space. Do you know if your indoor air quality is healthy? Based on my experience, if your attic or crawl space is vented, you probably could improve your living environment through some simple steps.
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