Nasty Crawl Space Renewed in Walnut Ridge, AR

Challenge

This home is the President's home for a college in Arkansas. There was no acting president at the time and the general contractor knew that there were moisture issues under the home. He had been considering doing spray foam, but was leery of it. The contractor spoke with John who explained to him that encapsulating the crawl space was going to the best fix for the problems. There was water standing all over the crawl space, which was having a negative impact on the wood support beams. This home was unique because the crawl space was essentially cut in half by a wall, with a cut through in the middle. With this, the system design specialist had to treat it like two crawl spaces, because there was no guarantee that the dehumidifier and sump pump would be enough to solve the problems throughout the crawl space.

Solution

The crew started by grading and prepping the crawl space to ensure that the materials would lay flat on the crawl space floor. After the floor was graded and prepped they installed drainage matting, this creates small tunnels for the water to flow through and to the sump pump and out of the crawl space. On top of the drainage matting they installed the CleanSpace liner, which locks all moisture and water out of the crawl space. They also wrapped the piers in Clean Space to ensure three was nowhere for moisture to enter. They also installed EZ flow drainage along the perimeter, this also leads the water to the pump to exit the crawl space. Two SmartSumps were installed, one on each side of the wall. These SmartSumps are specially designed for crawl spaces to remove the water that may enter the crawl space. To go along with the SmartSumps UltraSump Battery backs ups were installed. These battery backups ensure that even in a power outage the SmartSump will continue to work. 

To solve the moisture problems the crew installed two SaniDry Sedonas, the most energy efficient dehumidifier on the market. Paired with the SmartSumps and UltraSump this home should no longer have moisture problems. The crew finished by installing new crawl space doors, the doors that were original to the home were old rotted wood, so it was easy for critters and the outside air and moisture to enter the crawl space. The EverLast door seals to block out anything that does not need to be in the crawl space. They also installed vent seals, because leaving the vents after all of the other products were installed would be counterproductive. There is no scientific evidence that the crawl space should be vented and if our crews would have left the vents uncovered the dehumidifier would have had to work twice as hard during the Arkansas summer to keep that crawl space dry. They also installed a Lawnscape outlet and IceGuards for the water that is being pumped out to be away from the foundation of the home.