“That smell! A kind of smelly smell…. A smelly smell that smells… Smelly!”
It’s hard to label the odors that come from the depths below your house, but it sure can be smelly, and it can fill your entire house. Walking in after being closed up for a week vacation and your entire home smells like funky old shoes!
There can be serious issues causing foul or bad odors.
CAUSES
- Mold – there may be rotting, or other organic materials being attacked by mold. Mold spores that form on the damp ground can float up to the wooden structure of your house, and attack the sill plates, floor joists, and subfloor. Mold and dry rot can cause thousands of dollars of damage to the wooden structural members of your home.
- Sewer Water – Sewers can sometimes get backed up when the main line becomes clogged due to extreme rain events. Street sewer often interconnects with main sewer lines in older homes and allow back pressure to push through cracked or open sewer lines in the crawl space. Even a back-up from many years previous can become reactivated from becoming damp due to rain. Bacteria contamination is an extreme health hazard and should not be ignored by the home’s occupants.
- Rodents – Any small animal would love to live in your crawl space. What a great place to start a family! Of course, these unwanted visitors use your crawl space to relieve themselves as well. Feces and urine get a nasty odor after years of living in the fiberglass of your crawl space.
ANSWERS
- Air Vents – A lot of people ask, “should I open the outside air vents of my crawl space?” The clear answer is always NO. This actually can cause more bad conditions in the crawlspace, especially on humid days. This is a proven construction error for many crawl spaces built this way.
- Clean up – Getting the crawl space cleared of old construction debris and any cellulose-based items in the crawl space will reduce the chance of mold
- Dehumidifier – It is a good idea provided you are not venting to the outside and you have properly encapsulated the crawl space.
- Crawl Space Encapsulation in Chicago – to create a healthy airspace, “crawl space encapsulation” is the best answer. A properly sealed, and properly insulated crawl space becomes a short room in your home that can be conditioned with the HVAC system in your home. Circulating some supply air from your HVAC system is important, but also a dehumidifier in an encapsulated crawl space in Chicago can help.
With a high-performance system such as our Nu-Crawl System, you can expect a healthy air environment. We strive to exceed expectation with our 100-year life expectancy on our seamless liners.
