Crawl Space Fan vs Dehumidifier Before/After | Do Crawl Space Fans Dry better than Dehumidifiers

hello it's michael church with crawl space ninja comm and today i want to show you a crawlspace that we took care of in strawberry Plains Tennessee and for those of you that aren't familiar it's about a northeast of downtown Knoxville before I get started on that though I wanted to let you know that crawlspace ninja is officially expanding into Chattanooga beginning October so if you are watching this video from the Chattanooga area I just wanted to give you a heads up that if you need a free assessment or anything like that in Knoxville area all the way to Chattanooga area we are in those areas now and hopefully we'll be coming to an area near you soon so just praise the Lord for that for helping us to grow and a lot of this is due to YouTube and the different things we've been able to share so thank you very much so let's get right into it basically met with a homeowner very very nice people he did a diagram for us some of the things I want to show you about this is he tried to correct the situation himself doing what most people do following the advice of you know companies that are all about fans and ventilation and all that sort of thing so they had installed and Adam at mocs fan I think it was what it's called or something like that and you can see here we've got a fan we've got a closed vent and a fan closed vent fan closed vent fan fan and then he's got a recirculation fan right here that's basically blowing air in this crawl space and then this vent is closed so he's got one two three four five fans these are drawing air in these guys are pushing air out so we're trying to create a flow through the crawl space like this the other thing that's unique about this house it's about a 2,000 square foot house and they built it very good they actually poured footers here and here so these are cinderblock walls access here here which is the ductwork so your crawl through is here and here and this is the door so anyway I wanted to show this is a garage front porch road and all that's out here so I wanted to show you a few things about this situation after I believe a few years maybe less time the crawlspace became and stayed humid so the fans didn't really do a lot the fans that he had also had a humidistat on there so he could tell what the humidity was so let's move along to the next slide basically I like to show everybody a picture of the door so you can tell even before going in there this is what it looks like nice door he he had his own little frame and everything that he had made so that was very nice then you get into the crawlspace and this is what you're seeing right here is your humidity sensor just a standard vapor barrier and you can see water intrusion through the bottom part of the block right where the block is sitting on the footer it gets worse the further back you go but he did have standing water coming into the crawlspace and you can see right here how dark and muddy this vapor barrier is around this pillar because water was actually either coming along and percolating here or it was just coming straight up out of the ground either way we addressed that here's another shot I actually pulled the vapor barrier back and when I did I thought this was a snake at first it's not it's not it's actually just a piece of metal but again you can see this here one of the things you got to oh he also had this vent closed one of the things if you're trying to sell your house a home inspector may notice water intrusion see how the blocks a different color that is typically something that they're gonna note on a home inspection now I did pull the vapor barrier back at the day I was there there wasn't not a lot of standing water but you can see again this is that pillar I was telling you about you can see the watermark the F essence right here and then the mud-stains so then we get a little bit open part this is that ventilation fan in the front part of the crawlspace I was telling you about but look right here all of that you can see watermarks all along so he had quite a bit of water intrusion coming up higher through the block now even though this wasn't adding a whole lot of standing water what it does do is it causes more humidity because this block is actually evaporating moisture through it and you can see the stalactite is what I call it these areas right here where the insulation is starting to pull away from the main insulation it was installed correctly but whenever this humidity affects insulation it starts to get heavy and pull out of itself so if you start to see a lot of stalactite a and you see a little bit back in here you can see it right there that's what I call it I don't know what everybody else calls it but so I took some moisture readings and you can see we had a 22% wetness in the wood all right so that's pretty bad anything above 17 and 18 percent can grow mold 20% or higher can grow wood rot fungus by the way this little meter if you like is on our DIY page it's great little meter so it spinless so it just you don't have to worry about penetrating the wood but it's glow in the dark and the red shows you hey it beeps let you know you got issues it's got a hardwood a soft wood a masonry and a wall setting so it's got four different settings but look over here 84% humidity with six fans I think it was five or six fans so the fans didn't do any good did I tell you we're in Tennessee we're in East East Tennessee it's humid in East Tennessee so if your makeup air is coming from the outside of the crawlspace so you're drawing air in from the outside and that makeup air is 84% guess what the crawlspace air is gonna be 84% so anyway there's nothing wrong with ventilating a crawlspace that your spa to ventilate but you should control humidity while ventilating so anyway it's it's there's just a certain way you got to do it which is you know the way we do things around here so now look at this oh my look at all that look at that Oh what you think all that is I know it's kind of hard to see but that strap that was holding up it's a hanger that's holding up the insulation was actually rusted look at the stalactite in here look at all that nastiness that's that's wood that's not insulation look how dark that is look at this I don't know what that is I don't know what kind it is because we didn't test it but sure looks like some kind of fungal growth to me so anyway so this is what happens whenever you ventilate without controlling humidity okay okay look at that whoa that's that's pretty gnarly stuff there and there there it is there's that one that's rusted look how much that thing is rusted over time there's another one back there okay and then here's another picture oh wait I jumped I jumped ahead hang on don't look at that one yet look at this okay so before I jump ahead here to show you some after shots we went on location to their house and took some videos so I'm going to take a quick break show you this video and then I'm going to show you some after shots of what the crawlspace looks like to there should be no borders [Music] OPA [Music] okay so I'm here in front of the April err 1830 the humidifier that tells you what the current humidity is right now it's fifty percent relative humidity so if you're if the doors there you can take a flashlight and shine in and it'll tell you what the humidity is they also make a remote for this it's a wired remote that will hook up wirelessly so you can actually run the controls to the door and you can even control it with your smart phone if you have Wi-Fi in the house so that's a nice little feature that Aprilaire does so anyway let's go see what else is going on okay a couple things number one as you can see this was the block wall I was telling you about that goes into the other section of the crawlspace well they poured a footer here so our pipe is actually running underneath me into the sump pump okay so the sump pump is buried down in is surrounded by pea gravel we use the flow tech five-year Pro Series sump pump so it's got a it's all cast-iron 5-year warranty it's really nice it's a great great sump pump it's a half horsepower very powerful so we have three of these installed as you can see we've got the tube running into the dranzer drain and for those that don't know we install a dragger drain on in our sump pump lids and the reason why we do that is if you ever get a leak from above and it hits the vapor barrier that water's got nowhere to go because it's a big old swimming pool down here swimming pool liner so what we've done is we give the if there's ever a leak which hopefully there never is but if there is we give the water a place to go inside the drain your drain so that's a sealed system it's got the vapor barrier actually tucked underneath the the lid and if you notice also above the sump pump there's one of our vents that's been sealed up using our r10 foam board and spray foam so it's a thermal barrier as well as an air barrier that keeps all the hot humid air and cold air out to condition the crawlspace better so if one of the other things since this is an interior wall we did not insulate this wall we only insulate the exterior walls so this wall is does not need to be insulated [Music] [Music] okay now we are in the farthest part of the crawlspace we're a good probably 70 feet from the door now there is no dehumidifier the dehumidifiers in the front part near the door so we've come through three I'm sorry through two different doors because as I mentioned before this crawl space is in three sections so one of the things I wanted to show you is the humidity in here is the same as 70 feet aware where that dehumidifier is so a lot of people think that because a crawlspace is sectioned off or things like that you may need a lot of air movement or dehumidifiers or extra dehumidifiers or whatever and I would rather you over dehumidifier than under dehumidifier but at the same time as the air gets dryer and that section of the crawlspace it wants to pull the moist air from this section that direction moist air always follows dry air okay so that's one of the nice things about having a dehumidifier and again I'm not changing anything you can still see it's a now it's 50 so it's just depends on where you put it low it's 49 high it's 50 something so it's it's a good system as all I'm trying to say the magic number is under 60 anything above 60 can potentially start the mold growth again we soda blasted as you can see all this wood has been soda blasted this had insulation all in it again it was so bad I think I've got some before pictures that I can show you so this was all had insulation and everything in it and just a lot of moisture trapped and or actually had put in five or six ventilation fans thinking that that would fix the problem but if you've watched any of my videos it depends on where the air is coming from so if you're pulling hot humid air from outside and you're using 1 5 10 15 fans it doesn't matter you still got a hot humid crawlspace so I appreciate you guys watching this video I hope this was helpful just kind of gives you an idea by the way this is our 10 mil vapor barrier as you can see it looks really nice so this is directly on the dirt holds up really good where we're real we like this vapor barrier a lot we've also got a 12 milling with rocky or hard terrain that could possibly puncture a vapor barrier might want to upgrade to the 12 mil so appreciate y'all watching this video let me know if you have any questions please like the video down below and hope you make it a great happy and blessed day thanks for watching ok I appreciate you watching that video I hope that was helpful Eric went with me out there on that one so anyway we took some great humidity readings I believe it was in the in the mid to high 40s was the relative humidity along with the wood moisture level I think was in and again it was a couple days ago when we shot that video but you saw it was I believe 13 15 percent wood moisture if not lower so that's great hopefully you liked the way it looked so now let's take a look at here's a before and after shot again before after soda-blasting look at that soda you can even see the soda lines where the guys marked it up man that looks great when they go to sell this house inspectors not gonna give them any problems at all this looks wonderful now some people might think well why didn't you put insulation back between the joists I don't like fiberglass I think it's it's a nest for rodents and raccoons and possums and mice and snakes follow him and all kinds of stuff so what we do is we insulate the walls behind the vapor barrier so that's how we insulate it we use an ar-10 termite resistant foam board so that way we don't have to worry about getting termites up the walls or anything like that now it's not an excuse not to have your termite treatments and all that sort of thing it's just a nice thing we do a little add-on is to add the arctan foam board in there we still leave the termite gapper code still ventilate per code we still have to insulate per code so don't think that this is a non insulated crawlspace because it is alright and then I'm going to show you one last before and after picture so here's your before this is the same space by the way this is that pillar right there okay so we trenched all along the entire foundation you can see the sump pump sitting right there and I don't know if you heard if you remember but I showed you that that crawlspace was actually three different crawl spaces so we couldn't connect those three with the trench and and our easy flow pipe we actually had to do three different perimeter trenches with three different sump pumps because of how the house was built built very well but unfortunately we had to stall install three different systems had the humidity set on about 50 percent this is our April air 1830 very very quiet dehumidifier going into the condensate pump condensate pump goes up and drains into the sump pump sump pump pumps all the water out we got our foam board behind the wall over here all of our pretty r10 non-reinforced no cat pee guarantee vapor barrier before/after raptor pillars real good everything is real nice and clean we've got a crawl space ninja protection sign up there so anyway I hope you liked this video hope it's a good representation of what we do when we do the corner to corner inspection of the crawlspace before making sure that we check everything the only other thing I would maybe recommend that they do eventually is get the ducts sealed at the main trunk there was a few areas where the ducts could have been sealed a little better but this this crawlspace is going to be protected for a long long time I hope you liked this video please if you get a chance like the video down below and I hope you make it a great and blessed day we'll see you later Thanks [Music]

Channel: Crawl Space Ninja & Basement Ninja

Views: 298,344

Keywords: crawl space dehumidifier, dehumidifier crawl space, Crawl Space Dehumidifier vs Crawl Space Ventilation, crawl space fan vs dehumidifier, crawlspace dehumidifier, crawl space dehumidifier knoxville tn, encapsulation vs dehumidifier for crawlspace, dehumidifier before and after, dehumidifier for crawl space, crawl space dehumidifiers, dehumidifier in crawl space, dehumidifier in crawl space without encapsulation, Crawl Space Encapsulation before and after, wet crawl space

Id: KlUSPyZ18Yw

Length: 18min 21sec (1101 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 28 2017