How Crawl Space Cleaning Can Keep Your Home Dry and Secure?

Crawl space is often an overlooked part of the house. No part of your house is unimportant because a problem that began anywhere will soon consume your property’s essentials. Despite this being the case, crawl space is rarely cleaned and looked after.

A clean and healthy crawl space promotes cleanliness throughout the property but more importantly, it prevents mold growth, prevents floor damage, and promotes insulation. Find out how crawl space cleaning can keep your home dry and secure.

Prevent flooding inside the house

If you live in an area where it rains heavily, your crawl space can flood frequently. Crawl space floods are pretty hard to deal with even for professionals. If the crawl space has a poor drainage system and design, the water will keep pooling inside until it overflows.

When water sits for a considerably longer period inside the crawl space, it’s generally unsafe to check and enter the crawl space. If the dirty water is too much to handle on a regular basis, you can consider installing a crawl space sump pump.

The excess water can also significantly damage the crawl space itself. Overtime, it turns into black water. Also, damp and flooded crawl space can kickstart water damage in your property. These are enough reasons to regularly clean your crawl space for a safer home.

Protection from mold

Mold is a very serious problem to have on your property. It can grow rapidly if you leave it untreated. As mold only requires mold spores and moisture to grow out at a rapid speed, crawl space is one of its ideal spaces.

The mold that starts from a crawl space can quickly invade your floors and drywall. Most crawl spaces nowadays have vents so that air can flow in and out. The idea was that this will reduce the stink that is associated with the area. A very noble design to implement but it paves the way for condensation to occur inside the crawl space. If you own a crawl space with a vent, you have to clean it regularly.

No chance of infestation

Crawl spaces are infamous for harboring pests. In old homes, there are many cracks that can be used as an opening for these pests. Vents also wear out over time. Crawl spaces are the best place they can reside in, multiply and then bother you all while being perfectly safe and secure. 9 out of 10 times, uncleaned crawl space will have infestation problems. This is why you have to regularly clean the crawl space.

It is essential to not only conduct regular cleanups of the crawl space but you need to take measures to prevent pests from inhabiting the place. Routine inspection and maintenance ought to cover this sufficiently.

Reduced chances of structural damage

Excessive moisture and water presence are bad for your crawl space as water damage will start to set in. The water damage begins to deteriorate the structural element of your house. Crawl space water damage is notorious for termite infestation.

Prolong contact with water and moisture starts to damage the portion of the wooden floor facing the crawl space. It creates cracks in the floor which is ideal for termites to lay their eggs in. Apart from the termite threats, the water damage itself is very concerning as it starts to threaten the structural integrity of your property.

Slowly the floors, walls, and even the pillars will be affected by the water damage that started in the crawl space. You can avoid all the problems by regularly draining and cleaning the water in your crawl space.

Good air quality

Crawl space clean-up regularly will ensure high-quality air in your home. Unclean crawl space will build up excess humidity and water. As the air heats up the moisture lingering in your crawl space will be pulled out through the floors and subfloors.

The humidity will significantly impact your air indoor quality and you will end up paying higher energy bills. Unclean crawl space air also contains deadly microbes, pollen, allergens, dirts, etc. which also affect air quality. Therefore, it is in your best interest to have a clean crawl space.

How to clean crawl space?

While there is no particular order to follow when cleaning crawl space, you might want to follow a careful and planned approach. Generally, you can start with an assessment of your current crawl space situation.

You have to find out if there is any standing water there or what the humidity level is. After that, you have to ascertain if there are pests, termites, insects, etc. Then you have to look for water damage and mold growth. A proper assessment will give you a mental map of what you must do and in what order.

Nevertheless, we recommend dealing with standing water and moisture as the first thing.

If there are no standing water or moisture problems, start by removing dirt from the crawl space. Then you can deal with mold and after that, you can address the pests. Lastly, repair the water damage or any other damage inside the crawl space. Check for vents, and make sure there is sufficient air circulation and drainage facility. As a prevention mechanism, you can install a sump pump and dehumidifier for crawl space moisture control.

Why should you hire an expert?

You can clean the crawl space all on your own. But we recommend hiring an expert for a fast and permanent solution. You may not have all the necessary tools and products to clean and sanitize the crawl space properly. In those cases, hiring a cleaning expert becomes the cheaper option, believe it or not.

Call EZ Restoration USA for crawl space cleaning

EZ Restoration USA offers crawl space cleaning services all over California. We are an affordable and reliable company available 24/7 for all types of crawl space damage repair and cleaning. We use the right tools and environmentally responsible chemicals to deal with pests, insects, and molds. Call us anytime for crawl space inspection, repair and cleaning.