Best Insulation Methods for Crawl Spaces Based on Research Study

Michael Church crawl space ninja today I want to talk to you about the best insulation methods for your crawl space now for years I've been telling everybody that whenever you seal the crawl space it's better to insulate the walls whenever the crawl space is not sealed or it's vented which is typically how most crawl spaces are built today it's best to insulate the subfloor but I want to share with you some science that was done back between 2003 and 2004 and the study was published in 2005 that actually breaks down some great information about Energy Efficiency in crawl spaces based in a study that was done in North Carolina stay tuned foreign if you're new to crawl space ninja we talk about everything related to crawl space encapsulation Energy Efficiency air quality we hope you'll subscribe to our channel ring that notifications Bell make sure you check out our DIY store and our franchise opportunities as I mentioned this research was done by the North Carolina Advanced Energy Corporation I actually reached out to them to try to get them to be a guest on our YouTube channel and they declined because they wanted to be neutral in the information but they did indicate that I could share that information with our viewers so I wanted to bring this to your attention research was over a two-year period from the best I could tell it was between 2003 2004 and then the published study was done in June 22nd of 05. it was actually sponsored by the U.S department of energy and I'm going to put a link a direct link to the uh to the web page so you can check it out for yourself and read all the way through it it's it's a lot of pages like the the main part I'm going to be talking about is on page 60 coming up so what was the study designed for this study compared the performance of cross of closed crawl spaces which had sealed foundation wall vents sealed polyethylene film liner and various insulation and drying strategies to traditional wall vented crawl spaces with perimeter wall Vents and polyethylene film covering 100 of the ground surfaces so basically what they're saying is they're comparing an open vented crawl space to a sealed crawl space with different types of insulation to see which one performed better over a two-year period some of the materials they used was a class one Vapor retarder I did not see where they indicated how thick the liner was it was probably at least a six mil and in the closed crawl spaces it did mention that the liners were sealed okay now keep in mind that a vented crawl space does not require are you to seal the liner to itself it could be just loose laid Vapor Barrier while a closed crawl space does require the liner to be sealed in most building code applications the subfloor insulation in both sealed and non-sealed crawl space groups were r19 subfloor insulation again I don't think they said what kind probably fiberglass and they did use an r13 two inch foam wall insulation today the standard is an r10 in most cases it's very difficult to find an r13 but it was a two inch foam our foam that we use is a two inch it's actually two and a quarter inch because of how they manufactured it and it's a r10 foam R value so anyway just wanted to share that information up front so what was studied the study was conducted at 12 owner occupied Homes all-electric single family detached houses with the same floor plan located on one cul-deck back in the southeast United States and I do know that it was done in North Carolina not sure exactly what area of North Carolina as I mentioned if you want to read the information for yourself on that link below it's on page 60 section 6.2 they studied the electrical energy consumption data now this is an interesting quote we had been advised when we were beginning this study that we should not expect to measure any space conditioning Energy savings during the summer season so I don't know who advised them of that but they weren't uh too keen on or didn't feel like they were going to see a whole lot of energy Savings in the summer however when we analyzed the utility billing records we realized that there could be notable Energy savings so they wanted to test the Energy savings or potential energy Savings in the summer but I guess they were advised to only focus on the winter okay so they decided to focus on both which I'm glad they did because it shows so some very interesting data so as we can see on figure 19 this just so you know there were three study groups and this was one house in each of the study groups okay so as you can see they focused on a vented crawl space with r19 subfloor insulation in this study group closed crawl space with a sealed liner and r19 subfloor insulation in this group and then a closed crawl space with a sealed liner and two inch foam insulation in this group now this is very very interesting all right so look at some of these uh some of these charts so the vented crawl space is this one right here uh with with the dots the the sealed the closed crawl space is here and then uh with the subfloor and then the closed crawl space with the wall insulation is here so the dark one is the wall insulation the white one is the subfloor insulation and these two are sealed so in June uh of O3 the most energy uh let's just look at the vented first the energy was always used more in a vented crawl space now take keep in mind that in North Carolina just like in Tennessee September and October tend to be non-heating non-cooling months okay so depending on how mild uh the September end even the October was they could have not used much electricity to heat and cool the home so that's why you're probably seeing a pretty similar across the board here and then when we get into November typically it starts to get a little cooler and then obviously in January is when they use the most energy to heat the home but even over here in April again that tends to be one of those months that not a lot of energy consumption to heat and cool the house and sometimes March we get like more snow in March in in Tennessee and Knoxville particularly than we do in January and February so it's really weird weird climate here when I first looked at this chart I was a little shocked at what I saw here because I've been telling you from the beginning when we started our YouTube channel that wall insulation across the board is the best way to insulate a sealed crawl space but this data is very interesting and I'm going to share it stick with me because I'm going to share with you some more information later after I show you this chart but look look at right here again this shows energy consumption so obviously in the summer months energy consumption with subfloor insulation was much higher than wall insulation okay as you can see here here here and even in those those cooler climate months wall insulation outperformed subfloor insulation in both sealed and non-sealed crawl spaces but look at what happens whenever we switch over to Winter and we get into those colder months wall insulation actually underperforms uh versus subfloor insulation even in a sealed crawl space so here you've got wall insulation using even more energy than open vented subfloor insulation which I find very interesting again here wall insulation is not performing as well as the subfloor insulation in December and then in January that's when that cold Spike hits I assume we're getting in really cold temperatures because as you can see that outside what what's what's showing here is that outside cold air is rushing into the crawl space most likely and causing that subfloor insulation to not be that energy efficient in the vented crawl space but in the in the sealed or non-vented crawl space that subfloor insulation again is outperforming the wall insulation and then again in February and then in March it it it starts to to trickle down a little bit and but even March subfloor insulation is outperforming wall insulation and then in April the wall insulation starts to outperform the subfloor insulation so very very interesting data that I'm looking at here and it it it's making me rethink a lot of things about that but then I read the rest of it okay so let's look at what they said it because slides can be great but look at what they said in their data all right so for a sealed crawl space with subfloor insulation for the 12 months analyzed the floor insulated closed crawl space houses used an average of 15 percent less energy for space conditioning than the control houses which represented a savings of approximately eighty seven dollars 870 kilowatt hours per year for each household so the the cooling season of the sealed crawl space with floor insulation saved 21 percent the heating season saved around 11 okay so that's some pretty good information there all right but look look at look at this next slide in the sealed with wall insulation the wall insulation closed and sealed an average and had a savings of around 18 percent less energy than the controlled houses over the same 12 month period which represents a savings of approximately a thousand twenty five kilowatt hours or 103 dollars per year so even though in that chart it showed that you know the subfloor insulation in the winter was outperforming the wall insulation the average savings across the year the wall insulation still saved more than the subfloor insulation okay so that's very interesting there was an average savings of only two percent heating Savings in the winter with the wall insulation versus an 11 percent uh savings with the subfloor insulation but a 21 savings with subfloor insulation in the summer versus a 36 percent Savings in the winter so look at this next slide this is also posted uh by Advanced Energy uh for their savings so right here we've got the closed uh sealed crawl space with r19 and the the sealed crawl space uh with wall insulation r13 look right here in the winter December end of February they actually saw a a negative result with wall insulation it it actually was colder or this house performed worse than the previous year uh when it was sealed up the best I could tell there's a 14 point difference here between subfloor insulation and wall insulation but but all of the rest of the seasons the wall insulation outperformed the cold weather versus subfloor insulation so on average you still saw a better savings with wall insulation versus subfloor insulation in a sealed crawl space so this is what I concluded from this study again North Carolina is a fairly mild climate it does get cold there but nothing like Minnesota or up in you know New England or in the midwest or different places like that so my conclusion is that homes built in warmer clients fare better when the crawl space is sealed with wall insulation but performs worse in winter months with that same setup versus homes built in colder climates May fare better with subfloor insulation not wall insulation whenever the crawl space is sealed but will perform worse in summer months okay so there is a chance that you might want to do both options if you're in the Midwest for example and you've got extreme hot summers and extreme cold Winters you may be better off doing both subfloor insulation and wall insulation where Us in the South where we have mild Winters and really hot summers we're going to see a better across the board average savings just using the wall insulation so before you consider you know installing either wall insulation and subfloor installation I want you to think about the return on your investment okay because keep in mind that the the savings difference was around it was 103 versus 87 so you know that's what uh 16 17 a year in savings between wall insulation versus subfloor insulation but if like I said if you're in one of those really cold winter months uh winter climates uh consider the return on your investment if you decide to do both because if you've got a 2 000 square foot home and you put subfloor insulation in 2000 square feet that's a that's a lot of material that's that's a pretty big uh cost in order to insulate 2 000 square feet of a house to save you know maybe an additional fifteen dollars a year right versus wall insulation that same two thousand square foot home if it's got three foot tall Foundation walls it's only 700 750 square feet of wall insulation so you know you're going to spend less money with that wall insulation install labor materials possibly versus a 2 000 square foot uh subfloor insulation plus keep in mind if that subfloor installation ever gets wet there's a leak it's going to hide leaks different things like that so even after going through this study I'm still convinced that wall insulation is the best method even possibly in a very cold climate but if it was my personal house I might decide to do both wall insulation and subfloor insulation if I lived in Minnesota or Wisconsin or something like that where I had extreme cold weather all right and the other thing too the building practices up in the midwest their walls are actually thicker so in North Carolina you know we have four inch block wall thickness right typically it's about four inches where you know from what I understand talking to Brian and some of those guys lived in Minnesota they got six inch block walls so adding r10 on a six inch wall is going to be more energy efficient than adding r10 on a four inch wall so anyway just some of my thoughts there that obviously the least energy efficient of all of them across the board is going to be the the open crawl space uh even with subfloor insulation you're still going to burn a lot of energy uh trying to maintain Heating and Cooling in that house so I hope this was good for you I'm going to try to dive into this uh this Advanced Energy um uh study and pull out some more data and focus on some more topics I really wish they would have come on our Channel um and and they could have explained this a lot better but hopefully this was good put a like down below if you like this information on Michael Church crawl space ninja we hope you make it a happy and blessed day and we'll see you later

Channel: Crawl Space Ninja & Basement Ninja

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Keywords: Crawl Space Ninja, Crawl Space Encapsulation, crawl space vapor barrier, crawl space sump pump, waterproofing, yard drainage, franchise opportunity, crawl space dehumidifier, crawl space mold, crawl space humidity, damp crawl space, water in crawl space, downspout extensions, sealed crawl space, crawl space insulation, crawl space diy, soda blasting mold, moisture control crawl space, crawl space ventilation, best insulation for crawl space

Id: JZfksZZbrW0

Length: 16min 30sec (990 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 27 2022