Top 5 Ways to Insulate Your Crawl Space

A home built on a crawl space foundation is the perfect solution if you want to keep your home off of the ground to prevent water from piling up in a moist climate or humid season. However, if your crawl space is not properly sealed, encapsulated, or ventilated chances are high that your empty crawl space will create a dark, damp and humid environment, perfect for mold and fungi growth. Once they start growing, mold and mildew spores get into vents and between cracks in floorboards, letting allergens and worse into your living spaces.

If your crawl space is not sealed you are letting the outdoor air into your space, thus creating an uncontrolled environment in your home that will affect the rest of the home's air quality and temperature. Many homeowners are unaware of how their crawl space is affecting the rest of their home, and how maintaining a conditioned crawl space can reduce your energy bill as well as improve indoor air quality.

Properly insulating your crawl space is one of the number one ways to improve your home energy efficiency, indoor air quality and help lower your energy bill, especially in the cold winter months

How to Properly Insulate Your Crawl Space To Improve Energy Efficiency

Here are five ways to improve your crawl space and make sure that it is helping insulate your home and not constantly losing heat:

1. Eliminate the source of water with a crawl space drainage system. There are many ways to drain your crawl space and keep it dry including installing a SmartPipe System, a crawl space sump pump, and drainage matting for dirt floor crawl spaces.
2. Insulate the walls of the crawl space as well as the ceiling for maximum climate control. Cowleys offers a variety of patented wall insulated products including SilverGlo, a 2” thick insulation with radiant barrier, and an R-11 value. Pairing SilverGlo with our TerraBlock padded floor insulation will keep out all outdoor air so your crawl space can stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
3. Only use mold-resistant, waterproof insulation such as ridge board and cellulose instead of fiberglass.
4. Seal all vents and openings in your crawl space. This prevents outdoor air from getting in and helps keep indoor air quality healthy. Additionally, you should make sure all rim joists and sills are sealed using a foam sealant.
5. Install a vapor barrier to keep your basement dry and worry-free. The Clean Space Crawl Space Vapor Barrier System will prevent your crawl space from flooding, control mold, and rot, seal away any odors, add additional storage space, and most importantly it will help prevent any unwanted drafts from entering your living space above.

No matter what kind of crawl space you have, insulating and sealing it will only help improve the comfort and efficiency of your entire home. A crawl space is meant to be a dry, usable space that adds value to your home, not a space for mold, mildew, and pests to live and create havoc.

These crawl space waterproofing and insulation solutions will save you time, money, and a lot of future hassle. DIY crawl space encapsulations are timely and hard to do alone. A professional crew can do it in a fraction of the time and give you the peace of mind that the job is done right the first time. Let Cowleys show you just how much a dry, insulated crawl space can benefit you this winter.

Article originally published by Dr. Energy Saver