If your home sits on a dirt-floored, vented crawl space, you may find yourself wondering what is going on under your house sometimes. It is a dark, warm and often times damp space that is open to all sorts of unwanted guests. Yet, you probably think that since it is not tied to or part of your living space, what goes on down there doesn’t really matter. Out of sight, out of mind, right? Wrong.
The air in your home is constantly moving and escaping through the upper levels of the house. As a result, outside air is being consistently sucked in from the lower levels of the house – your basement or crawl space. Building scientists call this phenomenon the “stack effect” and because of it, 1/3 of the air you breathe inside your home at any given moment is coming straight from your crawl space. You might not realize it but your crawl space could be having a huge impact on your life. If all the unpleasantness lurking under your home is not enough to convince you to fix that nasty, damp crawl space, here are four excellent reasons that we hope will encourage you to take action.
Foul Odors
Brad Wazlavek from DryZone LLC, a Milton-based company that specializes in fixing crawl spaces tells us that “the biggest and most common reason people call us out to look at the dirty crawlspace is the smell. Things like mold, mildew, fungus, and wood rot can make the entire house smell really bad. Often times, people complain of a musty smell or tell us that there ‘must be a cat under my house because it smells like cat urine’.”
Brad explains that the urine smell very rarely comes from an actual cat or any other animal. It usually comes from the fiberglass insulation that is commonly stuffed between the floor joists to insulate the floors above the crawl. The fiberglass batts are usually held together by a urea-based adhesive. In the damp crawl space, the fiberglass gets wet and when that happens, the urea in the adhesive releases that smell.
Cold floors and drafts
Vented crawl spaces allow a lot of cold air in. Due to the “stack effect”, that air will eventually infiltrate the house. Most people try to solve that problem by installing fiberglass batts between the floor joists, but fiberglass does a poor job of stopping the air flow and also loses a lot of R-Value when it is damp. That means that the cold air not only makes the floors above the crawl very cold, but also infiltrates the living space and causes drafts, making the rooms in your house uncomfortable and very hard to heat during the winter time.
“We have found that sealing off the crawlspace and adding quality insulation can warm the floors incredibly fast. Most people will notice a difference within a few days,” explains Brad. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to walk barefoot through the house all winter long?
Indoor Air Quality and Allergies
If crawl space air is consistently being sucked into your home because of your vented crawl space, so are the mold spores and dust mite pellets floating in that air, along with whatever pollutants can be found in the nasty crawl space. Dust mite pellets and mold spores are the two major triggers of indoor allergy symptoms in the US.
If you or anyone in your family suffers from asthma or allergy symptoms that seem to worsen when you are at home, the source of your problems might be lurking in that crawl space. Sealing and controlling moisture in your crawl space will cause mold and dust mites to dry out and will prevent them from coming back year-round.
Save Energy and Money!
According to studies performed in crawl spaces by Advanced Energy, an independent building science organization, energy penalties of a dirt-floored, vented crawl space are so significant that you might as well postpone any other attempts to improve your home’s energy efficiency until you fix the problem with your crawl space. If you have ducts running through the crawl, energy losses can be as high as 50%.
Considering that, in a typical US home, 40% of the energy consumption goes towards heating and cooling, can you imagine how much you are wasting every year? When you close and seal your crawl space, you are slowing down the “stack effect” and keeping the unconditioned outside air from leaking into the living areas of your home. As a result, your HVAC doesn’t need to work as hard to keep up with heating and cooling your home. Studies show that an encapsulated and conditioned crawl space makes your home an average of 18% more energy efficient.
Your encapsulated crawl space will pay for itself in no time with real energy savings, and real extra money in your pocket every month!
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