Venting Crawlspaces: Bad Idea

It’s summer, and here in Ontario, that means humidity in the air and into your basements and crawlspaces.  As a result, you may believe that venting is the answer to relieve your crawlspace of that dry air, when in reality, it not only makes the problem worse – but can dramatically decrease the lifespan of your home.

The idea of vented crawlspaces is that air will flow through vents on one side of the house to blow out the other. Unfortunately, in reality the air from all the vents doesn’t escape out the others, it goes up instead. Wind depressurizes the whole home, sucking the air out of it at a fast rate then it goes in. This creates a need for more replacement air to make up for the air that left. So on a windy day, MORE air gets sucked up from the vented crawlspace. Anyways, why would you want very cold, very damp, or very humid air coming into your crawlspace to ‘air it out’?  That would waste you big money on your heating and cooling bills.

 Not only has that, but damp air into your crawlspace brought a whole other host of problems including:

• Dust Mites
• Sticking (swollen doors and windows)
• Smelly damp carpets
• Buckling hardwood floors
• Condensation/rotting/mold in your attic (as humid air escapes into the attic it can condense on the cold ceiling or roof)
• Decreased life of roof sheathing and shingles

The damage in the crawlspace will be obvious, but those are just SOME of the things that can affect the rest of your home. That’s why if you already have a vented crawlspace, you should consider investing in some CleanSpace vent cover seals, installed by the Foundation Guys.

For more information please contact us.