Your House Needs A Crawl Space Vapor Barrier in Springfield Missouri
If your crawl space has a bare dirt floor, then you need to install a vapor barrier. There is a lot of moisture that naturally comes up from the earth every day through evaporation.
Natural soil evaporation for an uncovered dirt floor crawl space is about 18 gallons of moisture a day. A properly installed vapor barrier cuts that down to about 1/2 a gallon of moisture a day.
Excess moisture in your crawl space causes mold growth on your floor joists and sub-flooring. The wet environment is an ideal breeding ground for insects and pests. There’s a wide variety of future problems you could be facing down the road without a vapor barrier.
A properly installed vapor barrier will protect your floor joists and sub-flooring from the moisture that comes from natural soil evaporation, but not flooding water.
If you’re getting significant water in your crawl space whenever it rains, then there are other crawl space waterproofing systems that might be needed to stop full blown water intrusion, such as footer tile drain systems and sump pumps.
What is a properly installed crawl space vapor barrier? At the very minimum, you must have at least a 6 mil vapor barrier covering the dirt floor in your crawl space.
A 6 mil polyethylene vapor barrier is the bare minimum for the industry to pass building codes. You should really not go with any less than 10 mil poly for a standard vapor barrier and you should have 20 mil installed if you are fully encapsulating your crawl space.
The thicker the vapor barrier, the more moisture and humidity it can keep from damaging your crawl space. It also can resist puncture holes and tears better. Depending on what you use your crawl space for, some need a thicker and more heavy-duty, reinforced vapor barrier than others.
If you use it for storage, or are encapsulating your crawl space, then you would want 20 mil to prevent the possibility of puncturing the vapor barrier and allowing moisture in.
If you just have one or two visitors in your crawl space a year such as a plumber fixing a pipe or an HVAC tech checking your ductwork, then a 10 mil vapor barrier should work perfectly fine.
No matter what your needs are, Dog Gone Waterproofing can assess your crawl space and give you the best recommendations for what you need. You can trust our team to perform a proper vapor barrier installation that will protect your crawl space and your home.