Richard Evans wrote:

"badgolferman" wrote:

Bought a 1967 brick rancher two months ago. The termite inspector
yesterday told me yesterday I had a water pipe leaking rather badly.
The plumber came and fixed it but also told me there is no
insulation under the house in the crawlspace. He says there are
staples there but the insulation is gone. For some reason the home
inspector never mentioned lack of insulation. Since all my
previous homes have been on slab I never thought to ask.

Obviously the old insulation was ripped out for some reason (flood,
maintenance?) and never replaced. I've called a few people to give
me estimates. Any ideas on what to expect? The house is around
1700 sq ft.

FWIW, I had a similar problem several years ago: damp, moldy crawl
space. I had all the insulation pulled out, sprayed the mold with
clorox, closed the air vents to seal out humidity, and never replaced
the insulation.

I'm in North Carolina, where the winters are admittedly mild, but my
HVAC unit is in the crawl space and keeps it relatively warm. Any heat
lost due to lack of insulation is lost upwards to the living area, so
no big deal. I put a couple of dehumidifiers down there at the time of
the problem, but once the space dried up, it stayed dried up.

I'm in SE VA and am suspecting the same thing has occured in this
house. My HVAC unit is not in the crawlspace. The plumber said it was
not wet down there and was amazed water hadn't pooled from the leak.
He said there was some sort of a pipe in the crawlspace that carried
any water outside of the foundation. I'm not entirely sure what he
meant by that.