Junior Achievement (JA) has been educating and inspiring young people to understand business and global economics to improve the quality of their lives. Junior Achievement is the largest non-profit economic education organization with programs taught by classroom volunteers from the business community across America and in more than 100 other countries.

Each year Junior Achievement honors individuals who donate their time and resources to the program. A half-dozen employees from Janesky’s Basement Systems visit area schools to teach the JA program. “The JA program is hugely rewarding,” said Richard Fencil, the Web Markting Director at Basement Systems. “It’s not that I help the students to learn the JA curriculum, it’s the enthusiasm of the students that really shows that this program works. It’s a great feeling.”

Junior Achievement is a volunteer driven, non-profit organization. More than 2,000 business professionals, parents, retirees and college students will enter schools this year to teach the JA programs. Volunteers use personal experiences to make the curricula practical and realistic. Providing children with positive adult role models, who illustrate ways to build self-confidence, develop skills and find avenues of success in a free enterprise system, is the focus of Junior Achievement.

“If every business volunteered a person for a session twice a year, it would make a huge difference,” said Dan Fitzgerald, Director of Marketing at Basement Systems.

The local chapter of Junior Achievement can be found here: http://bridgeport.ja.org/

“Do whatever you can to keep moisture away from your home’s foundation, Schultheis [of the News-Leader] said. Make sure rain is not getting into your crawl space or draining toward your home, he said. If it does, regrade the soil around the foundation by adding more top soil and planting grass. This will eliminate the depression or drainage problem.”

If regrading isn’t enough, and it typically isn’t due to the size of the hole that
was dug when a house is built and then filled with loose backfill, then a waterproofing or moisture control system may be necessary. Although they may sound complicated, many can be installed in a day and are very reasonable.

Pep Waterproofing, a certified CleanSpace Crawl Space Encapsulation dealer serving the greater Springfield, Lebanon, Rolla, and Joplin, MO areas of Missouri, can help stop moisture from entering a crawl space. Preventing moisture definitely helps to keep pests and termites away, as they will find more habitable areas to nest.

For as free crawl space estimate in Missouri, contact Pep Waterproofing.

The list discusses many of the issues that we here at Basement Systems have been addressing for the last 7 years, including the sealing of a crawl space with a thick, impermeable liner (you can’t save the planet if your throwing away a crawlspace full of 6-mil plastic every two years) and then conditioning the space.

You can see the crawl space list in it’s entirety at the Southface Web site, but as it deals with new construction, I have truncated it here to reflect sealing a crawl space in an existing home.

Here’s the list:

1. Moisture can enter the crawlspace when the home is being constructed, creating mold even before the home is completed. Proper drainage, sealing and insulating are important early in construction—before the floor joists are installed.
2. After construction, proper drainage is essential. Install a drainage plane on the foundation and a perimeter French drain that channels water away from the house.
3. Install continuous insulation on the walls. An example is a foam board that will not deteriorate should it ever get wet
4. Install a continuous, sealed plastic vapor barrier on the ground. Experience has shown that standard “6-mil poly” isn’t strong enough to survive construction so consider thicker, reinforced plastic. Overlap the seams and use mastic to seal the plastic “liner” to the walls and piers.
5. Construct a weatherstripped, properly insulated access door or crawlspace hatch.
6. Consider installing a dehumidifier plumbed to the outside or to a sump pump. Install a relative humidity (RH) meter and monitor it to keep the space below 50 percent relative humidity.

The CleanSpace Crawl Space Encapsulation System that addresses the above five issues. There are many products that make up the system, including a 20-mil crawl space vapor barrier with an anti-microbial agent built in.

If you have an unfinished basement, you can add valuable living space to your home, without having to build anything.

And, as this video will show, refinishing your basement is not only the smarter thing to do; it is also the “greener” choice. You will have the comfortable, efficient room you need, and your family, neighborhood, and planet will benefit from it.

Quality 1st will install Bilco doors, Bilco egress window wells, and window wells as part of their services. These are great products to go along with keeping a basement dry and making it a more comfortable space.

You can read more on the Quality 1st and their expansion into egress windows in New Jersey on their Web site.

To a lot of people, basements might seem unusable as living spaces. And it is not just because they tend to be musty, damp and cold. However, after 21 years in the business of drying basements — and not just removing water, but removing moisture and dampness from the air as well — we know that any basement can be efficiently waterproofed, made as comfortable as the upstairs, and beautifully finished.

Another reason people don’t like basements is because they’re typically dark.  Most basements have just a few small windows and get very little sunlight into them. And many of us tend to think of a place without enough daylight as unpleasant, even depressing. Sometimes, no amount of artificial lighting will do. So, you might think your basement is doomed to be a dark, natural-light deprived place, suitable only for storage.

Well, wait until you see what Basement Systems’ SunHouse Basement Window Enclosure. This window well enclosure can bring the sunlight into your finished basement. Watch the video and imagine the possibilities.

A damp, musty, smelly crawl space is not the best place for a human to live, but mold, mildew, bugs and various other critters love these environments. To eliminate these unwelcome guests, a home owner needs to change the environment.

Omni Basement Systems the basement and crawl space contractor in Hamilton, Ontario who photographed the dead rat, installs the CleanSpace Crawl Space Encapsulation System to help remedy damp crawl spaces. This is a crawl space vapor barrier system that takes into account the crawl space vents and ventilation, the door or hatch, air leaks, conditioning, and more.

Omni Basement Systems offers free crawl space inspections and estimates on the CleanSpace system.

The Nebraska and Iowa basement waterproofing companies out there are busy! Thrasher Basement Systems, Omaha, Nebraska, is working hard to help out home owners with wet basements, and prevent that problem from ever happening again.

Midwest Basement Systems the basement waterproofing contractor in Des Moines, Iowa is also bailing out wet basements.

The local Vancouver Island, BC basement waterproofing Basement Systems dealer, Island Basement Systems, installed a complete basement waterproofing system in a house that won the 2007 Georgie Award for Best Renovation over $650,000.

The builder for the project was RDC Fine Homes of Whistler, BC.
Island Basement Systems installed a full-perimeter WaterGuard basement waterproofing system, Delta-MS, a TripleSafe sump pump system, a CleanSpace crawl space vapor barrier system, and an IceGuard discharge line anti-freeze device. All these items and more can be seen on the Basement Systems Web site.

Badger Basement Systems, the basement waterproofing contractor in Milwaukee and Madison, WI and surrounding areas has had a lot of rain and their company, prepared for these events from their more than 30 years of experience, is ready, handling emergencies and drying wet basements.

East of Badger is Sure-Dry Basement Systems, the wet basement contractor in Green Bay, WI and surrounding areas. Sure-Dry has been the local Basement Systems dealer for 14 years, and really know waterproofing.

Complete Basement Systems of Minnesota is another local basement waterproofer in St. Paul, MN and Minneapolis, MN and surrounding areas, including Mankato, that has their machine up and running.

Just north of these three Basement Systems dealers is Northern States Basement Systems, the local waterproofing contractor in Duluth, MN and northern Wisconsin. Northern States is one of the first Basement Systems dealers since 1991, and owners Dwight and Nancy Gruetzmacher are well-known in their area.

Expect all of these dealers to be busy. With the amount of referrals they get when it rains from home owners with existing systems, Real Estate agents, and Home Inspectors, they really help a lot of people. So although they may not be able to get out to your house for a couple days or even a week, it’s worth the wait to work with the best.