Michael Church here and I just wanted to share with you a little bit about how critters can get inside the crawl space and I am going to show you couple different points of entry that you might want to address. So stay tuned for this next video we hope you like it.
Okay I am going to take just a moment to talk to you about this vent and you can maybe see the fan behind me. A lot of times people will ventilate their crawl space which is good idea to keep soil, gases, Radon, things like that moving out of the house. But, one of the things that is a problem with this crawl space vent, is that there’s areas for rodents, snakes, things like that to go around. And I don’t know if you can see it, but the fan thats back there, you may be able to hear running. They didn’t seal around the fan, so it’s not really been blowing a whole lot of air, because what’s happening, is as air comes out of the fan, it’s causing a back-draft and it’s not really a lot of air out of the crawl space.
So this is one of the things you want to make sure of, if you do install a fan in the vent of a crawl space, to be sure to make it where no critters can get in. Obviously. And then seal around the fan on the inside of the crawl space and that will actually make the fan work better, so I hope that’s a good tip for you. Okay, here I am going show you something real quick. There is a lot of critters getting into this crawl space and probably what’s going on is they’re entering right here. This, they did a pretty good job of sealing the sheet metal, although you can see that the caulk has probably gotten away from the edge and should be re-caulked. It’s about time to re-caulk it. But 2 places critters can get underneath this heating and air unit is here. A good sized possum could actually make its way underneath inside there, and then once they’re in this sheet metal they got free access right into the crawl space. So you may want to make sure if you can’t seal this all this properly that you seal it on the inside of the crawl space, so that you don’t get a lot of critters making their way into your crawlspace and tearing your insulation down and all that.
The other thing is right underneath here, you see how you got this heating and air unit sitting on little skids, and I can put my hand right underneath there. Okay, so smaller critters like mice, snakes, and things like that can make their way into the crawlspace there as well. So, the best thing to do especially if you have an older house already has a unit installed, is to seal the inside of the crawl space and help keep those critters out. Now remember they can chew through some things, but if they come up against something that’s sealed properly they may lose interest in move on to somewhere else. Here’s an inside view of that fan, you can see they just attached it to the joist with two screws, and air is actually coming back in. It’s creating a back flow because the air is able to make its way back into the crawlspace, so it’s not really doing a whole lot of good because of how they installed it. So, there is a certain way you should install fans. The other thing I want to look at is how dirty the fan is you see all the dirt all over it. That needs to be vacuumed out or cleaned out. So, you just wanna install these fans properly, so that they maximize their use of ventilating out the crawl space.
*Testimonial*
Hey Michael Church here with Crawlspaceninja.com. We just finished Cherise’s crawl space and she’s in the process of selling her house and Cherise tell me what happened with your crawl space when you was trying to sell your house? (Cherise) There are some moisture in there and humidity was very high, so you came in and fixed the whole problem! (Michael) Cool! So I guess the crawl space didn’t hinder the sell the house or anything right? (Cherise) I would not have gone through if the crawl space wasn’t fixed. (Michael) Well, so you gotta make sure you get it done right? (Cherise) Yes you have to get done right, and you have to get someone like you! (Michael) Well thank you very much! (Cherise) I am very happy, looks great down there! (Michael) Well thank you again for using us and I really appreciate you doing this video testimonial. Thanks again! (Cherise) You’re welcome!