This homeowner tried to make his home more comfortable by applying fiberglass insulation between the floor joists, in his vented crawl space

What Happens To A Vented Crawl Space In The Winter?
Crawl space vents are designed to pull outside air into your home, creating a continuous supply of outside air that moves through the crawl space at all times.

While many would debate the usefulness of ventilating a crawl space at any time of the year, contractors can certainly agree that during cold weather, these vents should be firmly closed. However, the truth of the matter is that few homeowners actually perform this yearly task.

How A Vented Crawl Space Affects Your Home’s Energy Efficiency
The purpose of your crawl space is to house the utilities in your home, including utilities that use energy to create heat, such as your home’s furnace and air duct system, as well as your hot water heater and pipes.

Housing these utilities in the crawl space during the cold winter season means that they will have to continually work harder and use more energy to do their daily task. This has a major impact on your home’s utility bills!

Issues With Comfort & Your Quality Of Life
Any homeowner who has been in their attic during the summer (or has seen snow melting unevenly on a home with a poorly insulated attic in the winter) knows that heat rises upwards in a home, leaving the building through the attic and/or upper levels.

To replace the air leaving your home through the upper levels, new air is sucked upwards from the basement, crawl space, and lower levels of your home. This is true even if your crawl space has floor joists insulated with fiberglass, as fiberglass is a porous material that does not inhibit air movement.

Cold winter air moving upwards through your crawl space leads to cold floors underfoot and a drafty environment in your home. If your air ducts are also cold, then the drafty feeling of your home is increased.

Pest & Rodent Infestations
Rodents and other pests will seek the warmest, safest place they can in order to survive the winter. If your crawl space has open vents, they will provide an open pathway for these insects and animals to enter in to your home.

Mice and rats are particularly attracted to the crawl space environment, which is significantly warmer than the environment outside. Once inside your home, they will be more than happy to nest in any fiberglass insulation in the space and live, breed, create waste, and die there. Rodents are also known to chew on wires, which presents a very real and dangerous fire hazard to homeowners.

Advantages To Sealing Your Crawl Space
By sealing your crawl space and installing a vapor barrier on the walls and floors of the crawl space, you can hold back cold winter air, prevent drafts, and create a physical barrier to deter mice and pests from entering your home.

Many crawl space insulation products,such as rigid foam insulation and spray foam, are able to do double duty in your crawl space, providing additional energy efficiency while also offering all of the benefits of home insulation.

As an additional benefit, sealing and insulating your crawl space will protect the space from outside sourced of moisture, such as summer humidity which will condensate on surfaces in the cool, underground environment of the crawl space. This moisture has been proven many times to create an environment that is ideal for mold and rot, which can lead to structural damage to wood floor joists and girders.

Basement Systems pioneered the crawl space encapsulation industry with the CleanSpace System, designed to create a healthier, more energy efficient, and more valuable space in your crawl space. We offer free, on-site estimates and inspections for your home.  Contact us today for more information and to locate a dealer in your area.

Studies have shown (one specifically through Advanced Energy) that you can save up to 15-20% if humidity is eliminated from your crawl space and home. Variables include how many stories your house is, if you have ducts in the crawl space, how big the crawl space is, etc.

Some crawl spaces have insulation in the floor above. This is mainly because the vents allow so much cold air in the winter that the floor needs insulation. Since insulation contains organic materials in the resin used to set the fibers, it is a prime breeding ground for mold. Even if it gets just a bit damp, the insulation loses all purpose. Heavy moisture burdened insulation hanging down from the sealing is a common sight in dirt crawl spaces.

In order to control the moisture in your crawl space, sealing up the crawl space vents is the first step. Secondly, separate the crawl space from the earth using a heavy puncture proof material like CleanSpace. This keep moisture and rot at bay. Finally use an energy efficient heavy duty dehumidifier (like the SaniDry) that will circulate the air and remove the humidity.

Taking these steps will bring you results that will make you wish you knew about the systems sooner. Odor removal, energy savings, and extra storage space make this project worthwhile.