[Greenbuilding] Crawlspace

Leslie Moyer unschooler at lrec.org
Tue Jan 13 14:05:45 CST 2015


I'm getting ready to have some work done on my crawlspace....vapor 
barrier on the ground & wall insulation.  I'm calling a local company 
whose info I got from this website to do an estimate: 
http://www.basementsystems.com/crawl-space/crawl-space-vapor-barrier.html

I'll ask these questions when they come to do the estimate, but also 
thought I would ask here (for unbiased answers).  I have two 
questions/concerns.

1. We had a small addition added to the end of our long, skinny ranch 
house last winter.  Imagine a long rectangle...we added about 15 feet to 
the east end of it (a bathroom & extended bedroom). I had them finish 
that new part of the house crawlspace in the "right" way (with a vapor 
barrier on the ground & wall insulation), but since the rest of the 
(old) part of the house crawl space is insulated in the (house) floor, 
the new floor is cold.  We knew we were doing this work soon-ish, and 
are just now getting around to it.  They knocked a people-size hole in 
the end of the old foundation to allow access to the new part of the 
crawl space, but I'm worried that the existing foundation (that runs the 
width of the house) will be a long thermal bridge that never allows the 
new end of the house to warm up. Thoughts?

2. Our plumbing runs are in the crawlspace and we had a bad plumbing 
leak there last year.  The kitchen sink drain became unhooked from the 
main drain pipe (or was never hooked up well to begin with) and was 
leaking water and some food waste under there for at least a 
year--probably longer.  Not helped by the fact that our septic was also 
backing up, we think.  It all got fixed when we did the addition and 
renovated both bathrooms (and did work on our septic lines), but the way 
we knew it was leaking was the smell coming from the crawlspace vents.  
And we had a great deal of difficulty finding a plumber willing to get 
under there and fix it. Anyway--if we have plumbing problems again--even 
a small leak--with a vapor barrier down there, isn't it going to create 
a swimming pool?  How would we know?

I hate crawlspaces.

--Leslie Oklahoma




More information about the Greenbuilding mailing list