Challenge

This homeowner's crawlspace developed mold and had dirty insulation from sagging down from the crawlspace ceiling, cold floors, and drafts making the home uncomfortable.

In the winter under-insulated crawl spaces let cold air directly into your home. Crawlspace insulation after time sags down from the subfloor and cold air get above it - rendering the insulation useless. Fiberglass batt insulation has paper facing and organic material in the resin used to set the fibers into the batt - both are mold food. In the summer relative humidity goes way up and condensation forms all over the crawl space surfaces including floor joists and ducts.

The homeowners experienced mold growth due to the condensation development. Musty orders after a while could be noticed upstairs as mold spores travel upward to the living space. An unending stream of water vapor comes up from the ground adding to the moisture load in the crawl space and house. The damp air is harder to heat and cool. 

Solution

Fogarty's Home Services helped this home with mold removal, lowering the humidity and making this home much warmer and more comfortable for the winter and summer!

Fogarty's Home Services will remove existing fiberglass batts from your crawl space. It's not fun laying on your back in a tight crawl space. Insulation has hostile fibers when it's disturbed. The insulation is very bulky and takes up a tremendous amount of space in trucks and our dumpsters which must be emptied. But it's necessary to have a healthy home in the end. After we Foamax insulation boards then begin our crawl space encapsulation system. Your vents are sealed up, and a dimpled, plastic drainage matting is installed don't the floor to create a space and thermal break. Then Terrablock foam floor insulation is installed over the drainage matting across the entire floor. A heavy-duty 20 mil thick liner is installed across the floor over the drainage matting and up the walls, sealed with mechanical fasteners to the walls, and spiked to the floor. Our crawl space line features UltraFresh anti-microbial ingredients in the product. Finally, closed-cell spray foam is installed from the bottom of the walls, over the sill plate, and on top of the rim joist. Speaking of the rim Joist we seal the rim joist with two-part spray foam preventing air leaks. We installed a crawl space door that will last forever helping to prevent air leakage, less condensation, and a more comfortable home. To top it off we installed our Sanidry Sedona crawl space air system. The dehumidifier and air filtration system are in one unit. It's made especially for crawl spaces, stopping mold growth, lowering humidity, order reduction and helping with lower air conditions cost, and helping upstairs to be dryer.