Home Crawl Space – To Seal or Not to Seal?

Did you know that up to 50% of the air you breathe in your home can potentially come from your crawl space? That’s pretty concerning if you have neglected that area of your home for a long period of time. It is easy for rodents, bugs, mold, mildew, wood rot, and who knows what else, to flourish and make your crawl space their cozy home. It’s not difficult to forget about down below, but doing so can have costly consequences.

There are both pros and cons to sealing, or encapsulating a crawl space. Of course, getting this done is going to cost money up front, and if you decide to do it yourself, it probably is going to be quite time consuming and difficult–depending on your capability and experience. Letting it go will obviously save you money, but will it be worth it in the end?

What does encapsulating a crawl space look like? According to the professionals, this refers to the process of dividing the area below your home from your actual living space, or building envelope. When done correctly, it prevents the passage of air from the crawlspace to your living environment and creates healthier living conditions.

There are quite a few reasons why you should seal up your crawl space.

• Encapsulating your crawl space will help reduce moisture, which will prevent mold and mildew from forming.
• If done yourself, encapsulating your crawl space can cost less than half of what it would if done by professionals.
• Keep the rodents, pests, and wildlife away. Those critters will have no place to burrow and hide and surely they won’t want to make nests on plastic.
• Sealing up your crawl space can improve your home’s air quality, making your living environment cleaner and healthier.
• Encapsulating your crawl space will help reduce your heating bill. By having it all sealed up, you won’t be losing hot air.
• If your crawl space is encapsulated, you actually can use that space for extra storage.

Now for the cons. You can compare these with the pros to see for yourself if encapsulating your home’s crawl space is worth it.

• Encapsulating your crawl space will cost you a dime or two. If you want to get it all professionally done, the basic average price is a few thousand dollars; however, you can choose to do it yourself.
• There may be even more costs that you could potentially incur depending on your choices and upgrades.
• Don’t forget about maintenance and management. Just because your crawl space is sealed and protected, does not mean that you won’t have to regularly check on it and maintain it.
• Sealing up your crawl space could possibly cause the need for an HVAC upgrade. Since everything is sealed, you will have less air movement throughout your home, which ultimately could cause your HVAC to work less efficiently.
• If you have piping and wiring running throughout your crawl space, not only will you need to get the correct professionals out to inspect the situation, you will also have to break through the encapsulation each time you need to access those.

After learning about some of the positives and negatives of crawl space encapsulation, your new knowledge should be able to help you to determine if sealing up your space will be beneficial to you and your home.

If you do decide that you’d like to encapsulate your crawl space and need some advice going forward with it, give Restoration Certified Specialists, Inc. a call in Santa Rosa, CA. RCS prides themselves in excellent customer service and in being experts in water and mold restoration and also specialize in creating moisture and vapor barrier for crawl spaces. They treat each project with the utmost importance and care.