WATERPROOFING/REPAIR CRAWL SPACE/ENCAPSULATION

Most crawl spaces are just naturally an unpleasant smelly place to be. Usually lots of bugs and mud or over abundant amounts of dust; there's just not much good to say about a bad crawl space. It is necessary to have one in order to get to your plumbing and electric and such. A crawl space can be cleaned, damaged wood repaired, a waterproofing system installed; some light put in there and all of a sudden it's not so bad. Crawl spaces can be handy for a lot of things. They just have to be put in proper shape first. Encapsulation of a crawl space - with a dehumidifier is actually the preferred way to fix a wet, moldy, stinky craw space.

You have to start somewhere. This crawlspace in above picture is pretty nasty; we had to put a board on the ground just to be able to crawl over it. You can see the water dripping from the insulation and mold on joist and under vapor barrier. But no worries, it will look like the top picture by the time we finish.

Crawl spaces with water damage have to have a sump pump in most cases. Water is then pumped out to a discharge drain outside. In some cases you can go under the footer to a gravity drain outside.

The idea is to get all the debris out from under the floor and begin to dig your trench for your drain tile. Grade out the dirt as to keep out low areas where water might accumulate in order to properly waterproof a crawl space. Drainage system is to direct the water to the sump pump and discharge it outside.

When the drains are properly installed and the debris is hauled out, the vapor barrier can be installed over the crawl space. This helps to keep moisture and mold under check and also make it much less of a burden to have to do any kind of maintenance in that area. That is the way a crawl space is suppose to look 

We do find at times, additional work needs to be completed in a crawlspace before it is fit to leave. Many times under-built techniques and or water damage has caused the need for further reinforcing of the floor joist and center beams. Different things can happen and we have only touched on a few. The main thing is to get a contractor that can solve the problem. Steel girder is often used to reinforce floor system.