Skip to Main Content

Crawl Space Repair & Encapsulation WV

Crawl space repair and encapsulation is necessary in areas where the soil easily absorbs water. Once the water begins to spread through the soil, it makes it even more important to protect your West Virginia home against the elements.

Schedule Your Free Inspection

Award-Winning Service

Proudly Serving Throughout West Virginia

Beckley, WV

With above-average rain and snow, homes in Beckley are at major risk for foundation damage. Basement Authority of West Virginia has plenty of solutions designed to provide long-term repair for your foundation. 

Charleston, WV

Silty, clay soils in Charleston are at risk for swelling when exposed to precipitation. This puts your foundation out of line and causes damage around your home, but Basement Authority of West Virginia has industry-leading solutions that keep your foundation protected. 

Clarksburg, WV

Clarksburg naturally experiences above-average amounts of rain and snow. It also contains clay and sandy loam soils. This combination can be detrimental to your foundation and causes structural problem signs. Basement Authority of West Virginia has world-class experience and solutions that protect your home from damage.

Parkersburg, WV

Parkersburg has humid summers, cold winters, and siltstone soil. These environmental factors don’t mix well and provide little support for your home’s foundation. Basement Authority of West Virginia can help.

West Virginia

Homeowners across the state of West Virginia can end up experiencing foundation problems, crawl space issues, sinking concrete, or leaking basements due to annual weather patterns. Learn more about how we can help protect your home.

Wheeling, WV

Wheeling’s soil and heavy rain do no favors for your home’s basement, crawl space, or exterior concrete slabs. Basement Authority of West Virginia has proven solutions to stop the problem permanently.

Benefits of Crawl Space Repair & Encapsulation

Preventing Water Damage

If your crawl space is encapsulated or protected against water in some way, then you should not fret about water problems inside your home’s crawl space. However, if you have an unprotected crawl space, your space could be experiencing a variety of water damage issues, such as excess humidity and standing water inside your crawl space.

Reducing Mold and Mildew Growth Opportunities 

Mold is attracted to damp, dark spaces, which makes your West Virginia home’s crawl space an ideal environment for it to flourish. Mold spores are virtually in all parts of the environment in microscopic quantities. However, when mold finds an ideal spot, such as your crawl space, it gathers and causes various different issues, with most involving health. Asthma and allergy sufferers are sure to be affected by mold and mildew.

Maintaining Reasonable Utility Bills

Your crawl space can greatly affect other areas of your home, such as causing high utility bills. In certain areas, a well-repaired or encapsulated crawl space can help maintain humidity and temperature levels inside the living area of your home, so you have a comfortable living environment. Maintaining your utility bills also ensures that you pay the same price, without worrying about high electrical costs.

FAQs

Encapsulating your West Virginia home’s crawl space will almost surely help you save money on electricity. Some estimates claim that encapsulating your crawl space might save you up to 15% to 25% on energy bills. When the air is humid, it might be more difficult to cool your home, whether you’re cooling your crawl space or the rest of your house.

When you encapsulate your crawl space, you eliminate any opportunities for moisture to enter. When moisture can’t get into your crawl space, it can’t go into the rest of your house. That means you’ll need to use a lot less energy to keep the air in your crawl space and your house clean.

One of the most crucial areas in your West Virginia home is the crawl space. Its primary function is to hold your home’s essential systems, such as electrical wiring, plumbing, insulation, HVAC, floor support beams, and the foundation itself. All of these systems are critical to the efficient and smooth operation of your home. If these systems are wet or damaged, they will not perform well, let alone if they are forced to operate in the midst of a flood. To prevent this from happening, you must seal off the crawl space.

Basement Authority of West Virginia can completely encapsulate your crawl space, preventing unconditioned air, moisture, mold, and mildew spores from ever entering. Waterproofing with an interior drainage system and a sump pump, vapor barrier, vent covers, and a dehumidifier are the key components of this process. The interior drainage system will be installed along the crawl space’s perimeter to catch leaking water and direct it to a sump pump, the heart of our comprehensive drainage system. The pump will work to steer the water away from your home once it has accumulated enough water in its basin. The vapor barrier seals off the whole crawl space, making it impossible for water or moisture penetration. It also prevents groundwater from rising and flooding the crawl space from below.

Any open vents in your crawl space will be sealed with the vent covers. This ensures that the crawl space stays dry no matter how bad the weather is outside. Our professionals will install a dehumidifier within the crawl space before entirely sealing the area. If moisture is still an issue, the dehumidifier will filter it out and distribute clean air throughout the crawl space and home.

High levels of humidity or standing water in your crawl space can lead to a variety of problems, one of the most prevalent and dangerous is mold. This is especially true during the summer, when West Virginia’s frequent rains provide an excellent habitat for mold to develop and thrive. When you boil it down to its most basic components, mold and wood rot fungus have a lot in common. However, there is one significant distinction between the two: whereas wood rot fungi are generally harmless to humans, certain mold species can be actively toxic. It’s not always easy to tell the difference between mold that’s harmless and mold that’s possibly dangerous.

Mold, fortunately, is pretty straightforward to detect in any home. When mold thrives, it causes discoloration, changes in texture, and emits a musty, often sweet odor. If you sense a musty odor, inspect sections of your home that are infrequently utilized, as well as hidden nooks of rooms that are frequently humidified (like your kitchen or bathroom). Mold may grow practically everywhere, but it prefers dark, little-used areas. Mold can be white, gray, pink, brown, black, or even green in color, depending on the development.

The mold that you should be most concerned about is black mold. Many other types of mold are harmless or perhaps mildly harmful, but black mold can be extremely harmful to anyone who comes into contact with it. Even if the contact is brief, infection, rashes, disorientation, breathing problems, and even fainting or seizures can occur. Those who are already vulnerable are, of course, the ones who are most at risk of significant and long-term consequences from mold exposure. Mold can be dangerous in many circumstances and should be dealt with as soon as possible.

Given how small the crawl space is, excessive humidity can be a major problem. Mold and mildew spores, as well as some pests, thrive in humid conditions more than in colder, drier ones. As a result, your humid crawl space could be ripe with all of these moisture problems without your notice.

A healthy humidity level, for example, should be between 30 and 50 percent at most. Mold and mildew grow swiftly at humidity levels exceeding 60%, while they have been seen to start growing at humidity levels as low as 55%. Unfortunately, this isn’t the only issue that high humidity levels can cause in your home.

If you discover that your home is much warmer than it usually is in the summer, you may want to adjust the temperature of your air conditioner. Furthermore, your home may be much cooler in the winter than it was previously, requiring you to turn up the heat. The stack effect is responsible for both of these outcomes. Because warm air is lighter than cool air, the humidity that collects in your crawl space will ascend to the rest of your house throughout the summer, making it feel muggier inside. In the winter, however, the thicker, colder air that seeps into the crawl space pushes this warm air out, making your home seem chilling. As a result of this waste, your energy expenses will increase.

Consider your West Virginia home as a chimney, with air entering from the bottom, rising through the structure, and exiting at the top. Air pressure is also a consideration. Air moves from high-pressure locations to low-pressure ones. The larger the temperature differential between inside and outside, the more essential this airflow becomes.

The crawl space provides more than half of the air you breathe in your home. That means that anything in your crawl space also is in the air in the rest of your home. For example, if there is mold in the crawl area, you and your family are likely inhaling these harmful spores.

Other issues that can arise as a result of open crawl space vents and the stack effect include water intrusion, high humidity, wood rot, sagging floors, excess energy consumption.

Dehumidifiers can help to keep your crawl space dry by removing excess moisture. The level of the damage you’re witnessing in your crawl space will determine whether or not a dehumidifier may assist with fixing your problem. Dehumidifiers help to remove moisture from the air and can function pretty consistently if cycled on a regular basis. Dehumidifiers can help protect your space from immediate damage while also preventing a build-up of air pressure that could later circulate moist air throughout the rest of your home.

Dehumidifiers, on the other hand, are not fix-all solutions. If you have a lot of moisture in your crawl space, it’s a good idea to combine a dehumidifier with other waterproofing techniques like a vapor barrier, an interior drainage system, and a sump pump. As a result, the various waterproofing methods will be able to assist one another while removing undesirable moisture from your space.

Common Crawl Space Repair & Encapsulation Tips

  • Be on the Lookout for Wood Rot: Wood rot refers to specific fungal infections that directly affect the wood inside your crawl space. Like mold, wood rot flourishes in damp, dark spaces. Once wood rot has set in, the wood becomes very soft and vulnerable to structural failure. Wood rot can quickly turn a functional wooden structure into a deteriorating mess.
  • Close Open Crawl Space Vents: While it was once believed that open crawl space vents help with general crawl space ventilation, this is not the case. Crawl space vents actually do the opposite by allowing the crawl space to be vulnerable to pests and the elements. However, closing or concealing your crawl space vents with airtight vent covers will actually make it more difficult for the space to fall victim to pest infestation and water damage from excessive rain.
  • Encapsulate Your Crawl Space: To prevent water damage, as well as many other crawl space issues, encapsulating your space may be the right answer to your problems. Encapsulating your crawl space involves the addition of a crawl space vapor barrier, the covering of crawl space vents, the installation of crawl space drainage and insulation, and the addition of a crawl space dehumidifier.

    Contact Us

    For Your Free Inspection

    * All fields are required.

    Publish Date:

    Last Modified Date:

    Proudly Serving West Virginia

    Charleston, WV

    132 Rocky Step Rd.,
    Scott Depot, WV 25560