Okay, so before I get into whether leveling the dirt in your crawl space is necessary, we got this great guide that we’re giving away, and it’s about the three asthma triggers that most homes have and what you can do about it. So, make sure you check it out by clicking on this link.

Hey, are you going to level out the crawl space before you encapsulate?

Well, no. I’m not going to level out the crawl space floor, and here’s why. Did you know that if you go in there and start digging around and leveling out dirt and taking this low side and moving it to the high side or vice versa you can encourage water intrusion? That’s right! We’ve had homeowners tell us that’s what happened when they leveled the dirt floor of the crawl space.

How Does Leveling Crawl Space Floor Cause Water Intrusion?

This happens because that hard packed soil they loosened it all up, and now they got water intrusion problems because of their grading issues that they created inside the crawl space. So, if you are not having water intrusion problems and there’s no reason to level it out, don’t level it out. Just put the vapor barrier down, and if you have to dig a trench and put in a sump pump, do all that sort of stuff, but we just don’t see any benefit to leveling out the floor, unless you’re just trying to create a level storage area. But is creating a level storage area in the crawl space with the potential of causing water intrusion a good idea? So, we don’t recommend that you try to level out the floor.

Exceptions to Crawl Space Dirt Leveling

If you have large mounds of dirt in the middle of the crawl space that is heaping over the main dirt floor, spreading out that dirt is probably a good idea. This will help you lose less vapor barrier when performing crawl space encapsulation. Many companies will heap up the dirt when digging a trench and sump pump and leave it. This is obviously very lazy and not encouraged but that dirt can be spread out too.

In Closing About Crawl Space Floor Leveling

Anyway, that was a great question, and I’ve struggled with that for years because to me it makes logical sense to try to level the floor out so that everything is level. But you could be causing some major issues with water intrusion if you do something like that.

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