Why You Should Care About Your Crawl Space
I know what you’re thinking.
“My crawl space is nasty, but I never need to go down there, so why should I care about it?”
It’s true. Most homeowners never even think about their crawl spaces, let alone go down there, unless it is absolutely necessary.
Out of sight out of mind, right? Wrong.
If you care about how much your heating and cooling bills are, then you should care about your crawl space. If you care wether your home is rotting or has mold, you or your family is experiencing allergies, or asthma then you care about your crawl space. If you care about the comfort of your home, cold floors, drafts, and how your home smells then you care about your crawl space. If you care about how long the paint lasts on your house, about doors and windows sticking, about hardwood floors buckling, and about carpets getting moldy then you care about your crawl space. If you care about your homes resale value then you care about your crawl space.
You can’t rationalize it or get away from it; you need to care about the condition of your crawl space. Your entire home operates as one, if one part is damaged the rest of the home is damaged.
Why does it work like that? Air mixing.
Your crawl space is bad. It is cold, damp, smelly and full of mold spores. This dirty, smelly air travels to the rest of your home through the stack effect or HVAC system through your ducts. One third of the air that you breathe on the first floor of your home comes from your crawl space.
During the stack effect, warm air is rising in a home and leaking out of the upper levels. As this air is leaking out of the top of the home, new outside air is replacing it at the bottom of the home. This stack effect is creating an airflow in the home from bottom to top, so air from the crawl space is being drawn upwards in the first floor, then the second and up. This means that whatever is in your crawl space is impacting you.
If your crawl space has dirt floors, that causes damp air in the area and the damp air uses more energy to heat and cool, costing you more money. If it is humid outside you run your AC more right? But, what if it’s humid inside and outside? You will have to run your AC even more costing you more money. If you get rid of the humidity in your crawl space, you will save significantly on your energy bills.
There are four steps you must take in order to eliminate the negative effects of a nasty dirt crawl space. Firstly, if there is groundwater leakage it needs to be fixed. The best way to fix ground water leakage is to install a sump pump. Our Smart Sump is a high quality system that includes a sump liner, reliable pump, alarm system, pump stand, check valve and an airtight lid floor drain. The second step is to isolate the house from the earth. This step is the key to solving your dirt crawl space problem. CleanSpace is the way to go when isolating your home from the earth. CleanSpace encapsulation system covers the floors and walls of your crawl space with a think, durable, plastic vapor barrier keeping outside air, humidity, and unwanted pests out! The third step is to seal any outside air leaks. You do this by making sure your crawl space access door is airtight and getting rid of any vents in the crawl space. The last step is to keep your crawl space air dry. The best way to do this is use one of our SaniDry high capacity, high efficiency dehumidification systems. The system takes up to 100 pints of water out of your crawl space air per day. The SaniDry wrings your air dry and its powerful blower moves that dry air out into and around your crawl space!
If you follow all these steps you are well on your way to reducing heating and cooling bills, cleaning up the air in your home, and keeping your family healthy.
Don’t you want to get your crawl space cleaned up now?
