Photo: BasementSystems Seal all vent openings. It was no wonder Mom was always fretting about mildew ruining her rugs.ĬleanSpace Vent Covers. At my parents house, fiberglass batts had degraded to the point of sagging and no longer kept cold air from reaching the floor above.
As that air passed over the cool surfaces of the crawl space, condensation was left behind. Instead of expelling moisture (at least in climates with humid summers), the open vents allowed moist air in. In those days, common building practice was to insulate the floor above the crawl space and to leave the crawl space’s wall vents open, so any moisture buildup would vent to the outside-a monumental design flaw, as it turned out. The damp concrete walls were as bare as when they were poured more than 50 years prior. There were some unpleasant signs of rodent activity and what looked like mold covering some of the joists. Dim light filtered in from vents in the walls. When my elderly parents sold the house a few years ago, it fell to me (with some help from my step son) to clean out the space before the new owners moved in, and I was reminded of what a creepy place it was.īatts of soggy fiberglass insulation hung haphazardly from the joists.
You could get to it from a hole in the wall that was covered by a plywood panel, but as children we rarely ventured through. The middle floor-the one that “split” the upper and lower levels-was built upon a crawl space. I grew up in a split-level, the house style that dominated suburbia in the decades immediately following World War II.
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