Crawl Space Door Installation

Whether you have just bought a home with open vents or wooden crawl space doors, or started to become concerned about the health of the property you have been living in for years, there really is no time like the present. Acting quickly could save you a lot of money as well as additional problems down the road. 

Waiting Can Cause Problems 

We urge you not to wait when it comes to your crawl space. Covering your crawl space vents and encapsulating the space is a relatively small task that any professional can undertake in a brief period at a relatively low cost. Waiting, however, can be very expensive indeed. 

Once dampness has taken root in your crawl space, it is likely to develop at an alarming speed. Homes with damp crawl spaces are far more likely to experience issues with pest infestation, mold, wood rot, and appliance breakdowns. All these issues are avoidable with the proper crawl space encapsulation. 

Prevent Damage with Speedy Action 

The benefits of crawl space encapsulation are incredible when you consider how easy and cost-effective the process is. Acting quickly when you notice issues with your property’s crawl space is one of the best things that you can do to minimize and prevent damage. In fact, it could even protect your health and well-being by preventing toxic fungal spores from spreading through your home. 

While wood rot will lead to sagging floors and walls, black mold is virulently toxic and durable. This fungal growth could cause migraines, headaches, dizziness, fainting, respiratory issues, infections, and even seizures. As is generally the case with these things, those who are already vulnerable are the most at risk of serious side effects when it comes to mold exposure. If you have young children or elderly in your home, encapsulation should be a priority.

Crawl space access points and vents are some of the leading causes of dampness and humidity in crawl spaces around Knoxville, Tennessee. In fact, they are one of the most common causes of dampness and humidity across the U.S. 

The Stack Effect 

One of the most subtle ways that open vents in your crawl space can cause humidity is via the stack effect. The stack effect is a phenomenon that we started to observe in the early 1990s and it was, in fact, one of the reasons that it stopped being best practice to install crawl space vents into newly built homes. Also called the chimney effect, the stack effect creates a channel of moving air from the top of a property to the bottom, which in turn disrupts the balance of your home. 

This has a lot to do with thermal changes. When you use your HVAC system to heat your home, for example, the warm air rises. In a home that is not being impacted by the stack effect, this air movement will continue until all the air is roughly the same heat, at which point it will settle. When the stack effect is at work, warm air will continually rise until it exits your home and draws in cold air from below. This colder air is often damp and will, over time, create a damp and humid environment. In summer, this process reverses and causes cooled air to sink and exit the home while pulling in warm air from outside. 

Flooding 

There is also the matter of storms, heavy rainfall, snowmelt, and flooding. While crawl space vents were designed to minimize the amount of actual water that passed through them, they do little to prevent it. This means that a very heavy thaw or a period of stormy weather can lead to a crawl space flooding with surprising ease. Once a crawl space has taken on water, it will need to be fully drained and dehumidified to prevent issues. 

The problem is that many crawl spaces that are not encapsulated do not have robust and proactive drainage and dehumidification systems in place. This means it can be hard to fully remove water once it has made its way into a home. This is one of the more obvious ways open vents can damage a home over a relatively brief period of time.

Just because you have installed a crawl space door that is waterproof and weather-resistant, doesn’t mean you will never face issues within your crawl space again. A loose crawl space door can cause all kinds of problems in your home in a surprisingly short amount of time. 

Damage and Dampness 

One of the biggest issues with a loose crawl space door is how it can lead to increased dampness and humidity around your home. Even a small gap between your crawl space doors and entryways and their frames can allow water to seep in during storms, allow pests into your home, and even make it easier for intruders to gain entry to your home via your crawl space. 

This is worse than simply having an exposed gap in your property’s crawl space, because of how a partially affixed crawl space door traps moisture inside your crawl space. While the stack effect can cause many issues, it does keep the air moving. Without this, a damp crawl space becomes an incubator for moisture and fungal growth. 

Replacement and Repair 

Thankfully, a loose crawl space door or entryway is an easy thing to fix with the right help. A professional can easily assess the cause of the looseness and find a replacement door. If the issue is something smaller, however, like worn or damaged seals around the door, they can simply refresh the seals to prevent water from getting into your crawl space. 

This is a quick and low-cost process, but the damage that can spring from having a loose crawl space door for too long is more concerning. This is why it is important to check your crawl space doors and entryways at regular intervals. Act quickly if you notice that they are loose or the seal around them has become worn, cracked, or damaged in any way.