Hey, Michael Church, Crawl Space Ninja, and
today we got a special video. We're actually gonna take a look at a crawl
space that was $25,000 to encapsulate by one of our competitors, and how the homeowner
called us out and decided to have us redo everything. Stay tuned. Okay, now as you can see before we even get
into the crawl space, they used a reinforced vapor barrier. So what does that tell you we might run into
while we're down there? Plus, the fact that it's a clear vapor barrier
means that you can see everything under it. So why don't you come on in with us and let's
take a look and see what we can find. Show you the door real quick. We got air intrusion here, light and comin'
in and all that, and across the top as well. You can actually see outside. One of the things I wanted to point out was
it they put this here. I guess that was there fix for the air intrusion. To me, this is just nerve-racking trying to
climb in here and this things attacking you as you come into the crawl space. I'm not sure why this was here, but it also
wasn't attached very well, so all the moisture's evaporating right here. This is where five or six pieces of plastic
came together, and this should be one of the nicer areas that you pay especial attention
to whenever you encapsulate and attach all this to the door framing because this is the
most trafficked area of your crawl space. So if you don't treat this are really good,
it's gonna get like this over the years. So you want to make sure you attach all the
plastic and everything to the door framing really well. Okay, so let's start with the sump pump. As you can see here, they had put in what
appears to be a Jackel basin and looks like I can see from here, it's a third horsepower
performance brand sump pump. Here's the check valve that they installed,
but just look at how distraught everything is. They didn't use any of the gaskets to seal
anything up. This wire is actually supposed to go through
here. That's what this is for is to make sure that's
done. The other thing I want you to notice. The pump does not have a way for the plastic
if there's ever a flood from above, the water can't really get into there until the water's
pretty high. Plus, it's not really at ground level. Maintenance is gonna be a little difficult
with how this was installed. You just kinda gotta raise all this up. You can see it's got a Liberty pump, which
is a great pump in it, but there's no water in there which is great. But we woulda probably done the pump a little
differently. We woulda brought the plastic together and
brought it in and so that way if you get a flood from above it rides onto the plastic
into the pump. The other thing is, this is probably very
noticeable to me, is that the plastic, and I'm gonna be tearing this plastic apart as
we go along, but it's just very distraught. They used adhesives to seal it together, so
they missed a lot of spots here. They didn't even put it fully underneath the
ductwork. I understand sometimes you have a hard time
doing that, but it wouldn't be difficult to get it underneath this this ductwork because
it does have room to do so. They also used adhesives on the walls as you
can see right up here, so eventually adhesives will fail. Instead of it being mechanically attached
they just used probably a polyurethane caulk on all of this. And look at this vent, it's not even sealed
around the vent here or anything. They just shoved foam board in. It's probably about an R-3 or and an R-5,
which isn't a very good foam board plus it's an EPS foam board, which means it doesn't have
any termite resistant capabilities or anything like that. So this is a $25,000 crawl space job and just
in this one spot I was able to find quite a few mistakes. Okay, so they installed a Santa Fe Advanced
2 Dehumidifier. We've used these in the past. We decided to go with the Aprilaire
model for a few different reasons, but it's an effective dehu when it's properly maintained
and all that sort of thing. But one of the things, I don't know if you
can tell, but this is where the air blows out the dehu. There's the intake and the air is blowing
directly at that wall and then it also has an output over here and it's blowing into
that HVAC system. So, it's not really giving this dehumidifier
the proper space it needs to control a 3,000 square foot crawl space. I mean, we are ... the door is right behind
me. I understand you want to position the dehumidifier
where you can get to it and maintenance it, but at the same time, it should've been put
more back, more towards the back so that the air could move better. There's no active ventilation system in here,
so there's no soil gases being removed, which also helps to distribute the dry air throughout
the crawl space. So basically it's just getting really dry
in this spot and the dehu will shut off cause the dry air doesn't have a chance to move
to the rest of the crawl space. They also didn't attach the condensate pump
properly. This is actually supposed to be mounted on
the dehumidifier. In order to do that, you gotta get this guy
a little bit higher off the ground. Basically, one cinder block high should be
high enough. But this is just loose, so if somebody goes
crawling through they could knock it out of the way. So, and this is it. This is your traffic to the rest of the crawl
space. You can't even go that direction 'cause there's
ducts all back there. So you've gotta go here, so they really put
it in an inconvenient spot. I know that it hadn't been maintenanced in
over three years. This job was done three years ago. I know it hadn't been maintenanced because
the homeowner said they hadn't had any maintenance done and we had shown them a lot of zooglea
built up in the drainage line and stuff like that. So it's a very good dehumidifier, but it's
in a really bad spot. Here is another vent that was sealed up. Again, not a very good air seal, so as the
dehumidifier runs, it's going to allow a lot As you can see here's where the seams are
coming together. Everything is just not really done to our
standards. I mean, is it effective? Yes, but with the polyurethane it's going
to eventually fail. I can actually see a centipede climbing behind
it. And again, what kind of vapor barrier is it? It's a reinforced. As all this gets wet and damaged, it can potentially
give off a cat urine odor and it's clear. I just don't like the clear. There's no ventilation system in here to move
the air or to get rid of the soil gases or anything. It kinda smells like dog poop in here to be
quite honest with you. I couldn't describe it at first, but Kayla was telling me, she thought it kinda smelled like that too. It does. It stinks in here. Remember soil gases will build up if you encapsulate
a crawl space without proper ventilation. When I came in here to do the initial inspection
with the homeowner, I just noticed things like this. You've got these gaps that you got all this
exposed earth. This is overlapping. It should be a minimum of 12 inches. Do you see how close these are together? If you're gonna use a clear vapor barrier,
you need to make sure you use extra precaution to overlap it appropriately because people
can actually see the overlaps. Then you got this. It's not even taped or they didn't even put
any caulk or anything here, so you got these areas that are exposed. Then look a this. You got these two pipes that is part of the
water management system, running together, and they're not connected. So, and here's something else. It's above the ground. It's above the ground. Can you believe that? They just laid it on the ground. I mean, it's below the ground over there and
it's above the ground over here. I mean, I'm not a scientist, but I'm pretty
sure water can't run uphill, so what's the point in just laying a trench with no sock. There's no way of protecting it. There's no sock on it. It is perforated, so that's good. At least they didn't use a solid pipe. It does have perforation, so as to allow water
in. But all this mud, since there's no sock and
no aggregate, all this mud ... Look at that, just clogged it. There's no where for ... this thing's clogged. It's $25,000, folks. This is what people are spending their money
on and because the homeowners weren't in a position to get down here and check the project,
this is what they wound up with. If you're gonna do something, you gotta do
it right. Then we pan over here at this pilar. You can see all the moisture building up behind
the pilar. All right, see the condensation building up
behind, so all that stuff's evaporating. All right, and again, they didn't wrap these
properly, they didn't tape it, so moisture's coming from probably underneath the plastic,
rising up. So, they did glue it here, but as far as I
can tell ... Look at that. See, it's already starting to fall. Look at this. I mean, the adhesive ... I can stick my finger
in there. Either it's already giving way or they just
didn't put the right amount of caulk on it. So anyway, there's a lot of issues in this
crawl space. It's just, it's pathetic. So you gotta have a sock around the trench. You gotta put it underground. It just has to happen. All right, take a look up here, okay. Keep in mind, I don't know if they did any
mold remediation or not, but there's what appears to be mold and the insulation. Whenever I pulled moisture meters on all this
wood, it was in the high teens, like 17, 18%. So the insulation holds moisture even though
there's a dehumidifier because the dehumidifier can't really push that dry air where it needs
to be. So insulation's holding moisture. We've got mold present on an encapsulation
that was paid for and done by professionals. Then again, you got another column here with
exposure to earth, not wrapped and taped properly. And I've got another space of mold that I'm
gonna show you here in just a second, but you can even see ... just see the darkness. See how the wood's discolored. You gotta a little bit of white. That's all mold too. You see all that on the joist. Just because it's not growing mushrooms doesn't
mean it's not mold. I mean, there's quite a bit. I don't know if you can see that raised stuff
up off the joist or not, but there's quite a bit of issues that could've been handled
properly and they just chose not to. Here's another spot where you can see the
trench above the ground. It goes all the way around the corner. Who knows if they even joined that corner
or not? They could have another break in the pipe
right through there, but if you follow all the way around both sides, the trench is above
the ground. So it doesn't really do a whole lotta good
if it's above the ground. So again, more vapor barrier moisture. So you can see there's water underneath, which
is fine. I mean that's one of the questions we always
get, is should I have water underneath my plastic? And this kinda shows you right here. I don't know if you can see all this condensation
underneath the plastic. You're going to have water under the plastic. Now what you don't want is, you don't want
the plastic to become a waterbed. We've not had rain in about a week, but the
soil evaporates moisture just naturally. So you're always gonna have some kind of water
under the plastic, but that's why you want to overlap and tape everything really good
to make sure this doesn't evaporate out into the air and some of it will. It's difficult to keep moisture out, from
evaporating into the crawl space no matter how good the vapor barrier was installed,
which is why you have the dehumidifier, and it's not been on since we've been here. So I don't know if maybe that one pocket over
there is really dry, but it's not ran at all since we've been here. Just another pillar not properly wrapped exposing
the soil and all that kind of thing, but I tell ya, the biggest problem in this little
spot is right here. Look at all of that. It looks like somebody's vascular system. I mean look, I don't know if you can pick
that up on the camera, but all that is some kind of wood rot fungus that's taken hold
and I believe it was even getting on the block. Look how it's made its way to growing on the
block itself, which is unusual. It's not very often you see something like
that, but this wasn't addressed properly. This is obviously a main girder of the house,
a main beam here and this should have been care of a little better. It even goes all the way over to this side
and then to this main joist and there's a lot more of this, but just a very poorly done
encapsulation. One other thing I wanted to show you professionals
should always make sure they clean up after themselves. If you take a look back there in that corner,
all of that foam board ... Now that's the furthest spot from the door, so a lot of times
people think, "Oh, well, the homeowner will never go back in this spot, so I'm just gonna
put some trash back there." And that's exactly what they did. There's wiring and looks like a pencil, the
foam board, and just a bunch of stuff back in this back corner. I don't know if you can see that. I can see dirt right there in that seam that's
popped up. Then you gotta another hole in there in that
area. You got pretty muddy right through there which
is why they had the water management system installed in the first place. Look what's underneath though. Looks like they may have left the vapor barrier
behind, the old vapor barrier. So sometimes you can't get the plastic out,
but if you can remove the old plastic, you certainly want to do that 'cause it can create
odors, believe it or not. That trapped plastic can hide organic material
like wood and different things. So anyway, I'm not trying to beat up on anybody. I'm just trying to say, if you're gonna pay
your hard earned money to get your crawl space encapsulated correctly, you may want to make
sure you take a look at it after the job's done. You'd never get your kitchen remodeled and
not go in there to make sure it was done properly. So whether, if you can't get in your crawl
space, if you're, maybe have a real tight crawl space that you can't get into or you're
older and you can't crawl in there yourself, or even younger and you can't crawl in there
yourself, have 'em shoot a video of the whole crawl space. Just take their phone and just have 'em do
a video. Just crawl around so at least you can see
what all was done. It's as simple as that to make sure your contractor
does the crawl space correctly. So, I am Michael Church with Crawl Space Ninja,
and you know what, we're gonna fix this crawl space. We're gonna do it right and then we're gonna
do another video later and show you what it's supposed to look like, so stay tuned.
