Remove Moldy, Damaged Insulation from Crawl Space Ceiling in Housatonic, MA

The owner of this Housatonic home contacted Fogarty's Home Services as he was concerned about his pipes freezing. One of the issues we found when doing the home evaluation is that the home had old, moldy insulation in the crawl space ceiling. The old thinking in crawl space construction was to vent the crawl space and create the thermal boundary (insulation layer) at the crawl space ceiling. It doesn't work. Insulation in this crawl space was pulled by gravity away from the sub floor. The same cold air under the insulation was flowing into the space on top of it - rendering the insulation useless. As the insulation got heavier with moisture content, it fell away from the sub floor even more and was falling to the floor. Fiberglass batt insulation has paper facing and organic material in the resin used to set the fibers into a batt - both are mold food. Fogarty's Home Services happily took on the difficult job of removing the existing fiberglass batts from the crawl space. The insulation was very bulky and took up a tremendous amount of space in trucks, and our dumpsters, but it was necessary to have a healthy home in the end. Now, Fogarty's Home Services is prepared to properly install insulation so the homeowner won't have to worry about his pipes freezing.