You are getting your home ready to sell; upgrades have been made, you have cleaned every room in the house, and you even have staged some of the rooms per your realtors advice. The “preparing to sell” checklist that your realtor gave you is almost complete before any home inspection occurs—but then you see a dreaded word at the bottom of the list — crawlspace. Yikes. You completely forgot about the crawl space; your motto so far in the house has been out of sight, out of mind. It looks like you’ll have to cross your fingers as you go down to inspect the situation. What’s the worst that could happen?
Obviously the crawl space is not the most appealing of places and it’s not like you are going to be hanging out in there; however, neglecting to keep up with your crawl space’s environment can have drastic and costly consequences. If you are currently trying to sell your home, the home inspector will be scrutinizing your crawl space, as a poorly maintained one can cause all sorts of issues for the home itself and for the health of the residents.
Take a look at a few real-life events from the news about crawl space inspections gone wrong.
Animals Galore
Bruce Barker, founder and president of Dream Home Consultants, in Cary, N.C., has collected close to 6,000 photos documenting things like fried lizards and mice inside electrical panels, snakes in basements and crawl spaces, and even a black widow spider. There have been drowned frogs under water heaters, cooked mice in furnaces, frozen porcupines in crawl spaces, and dead fish on a roof. Possums, squirrels, spiders, snakes, termites, raccoons, and cats are common house guests of crawl spaces.
Unexpected Guests
Quite a few people claim to have had homeless people living in their crawl space, or at least temporary visitors. One even had an entire setup, with a tent and remnants of food and drink. The person had even disconnected a heat duct so they could be warm in the cold winter months. You just never know what a person will leave behind—clean or unclean.
Another Type of Plant
Bowman, from Boggs Inspection Services, found an entire grow room that had been dug out and even had its own door and lighting. There was definitely something suspicious going on down there; however, he was impressed that someone actually dug out and created an entire room underneath the house that was only accessible from the crawl space.
Do It Yourself
Some things can be done yourself and some things just shouldn’t be done yourself. There are many reports of people using duct tape, caulking, foil, and much more to prevent leaks and to prevent things from falling apart. Many of their DIY projects were fire hazards or were unsafe.
Some Other Random Sightings
A refrigerator, an adult magazine stash, animals, alcohol, gasoline, lots and lots of animal excrement, car parts, old appliances, and the list goes on and on…weird stuff indeed.
Keeping up with and maintaining your crawl space, as well as regularly going down there to inspect it, will help keep the nasty, odd, and live things away.
If you 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 today. 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.
