Why Eliminating, Sealing, or Closing Crawl Space Vents in Conjunction With a Crawl Space Vapor Barrier Can Help Contribute to a More Durable, Efficient, and Healthy Home.

When choosing a crawl space liner for your home, asking a few key questions at the beginning will help ease your decision and give you the best long-term value in the end.

Whether you’re doing your research online or hoping to stumble upon the right crawl space encapsulation materials at your local hardware store, knowing what comprises the “right” materials in the first place is really the best place to start. 

Just because your local store carries 6-mil poly that doesn’t mean that product is the best crawl space vapor barrier choice for an educated buyer like yourself who is hoping to do this right the first time.  By taking some extra time to identify and select the right materials for the job and also researching the proper installation techniques, you can significantly reduce future crawl space moisture-related issues.

Here are the questions that you should be asking or researching to make sure you’re getting the right crawl space encapsulation products:

Whether from a natural disaster or a busted pipe, flood damage can cause major problems for your home. Crawl spaces can take the brunt of this damage, and in many cases are left completely submerged in sitting water teeming with bacteria. That’s why it’s important to implement preventative measures, ensuring that you have a properly encapsulated crawl space that will diminish the likelihood of floods causing major damage to your home.

Airborne allergens affect over 50 million Americans annually and the number increases every year. This should make indoor air quality a priority for property owners or managers. While some people believe that simply employing filters or air purifiers will do the trick, this may not always be the case.

Although quality moisture protection is a crucial part of protecting all buildings, we are often guilty of not taking the time to fully research vapor barrier products and suppliers. Then, after the project is finished and the moisture-related problems begin, we scratch our heads in frustration, wondering how this could have happened.

My job is to talk to contractors about the materials and products they use on a work site. I ask lots of questions about their processes so I can understand how to design materials that make their labor more efficient. I often hear that timeliness and a long lasting, quality outcome are two things these contractors strive for. Believe it or not, a lot of these things can be boiled down to the kind of seaming tape they use when putting up vapor barriers in crawl spaces.

I get a fair amount of calls from homeowners with various descriptions of crawl space odors.  One homeowner was complaining about an odor coming from his crawlspace, so I was able to refer them to a local contractor who I’d had experience with in the past. The contractor headed over to the home and reported finding an old rusty drum of oil stowed away in the crawl space. The home was old and no one knew how long it had been down there, but thanks to moisture in the crawl space, the barrel had finally rusted through. The odor of exposed oil was being drawn into the home via stack/chimney effect.