Hello all,
We've finally closed on the home! yay! Thanks for all your patience while I
muddled through the details.

Now on to repairs. If this is the wrong forum to ask my questions a gentle
shoo! will get me out of here.
Our house is kind of at the bottom of a slope and a lot of the water flows
towards the house, we had a crawlspace encapsulation person come in and
check out our crawl space, he says the foundation is letting in water
through because the driveway is loke a funnel. From what I understand we
can actually prevent that by putting in trench drains in the driveway to
take wateraway from the house. My main worry is the theory that the
crawlspace needs to be sealed off. I've read all the articles speaking both
for and against sealing off vents.
While I understand the logic of why we need to seal off the vents, the
building code here still requires vents to be provided for crawl spaces. I
dont want to do anything to mess with the "CODE"...
At the same time I am concerned that sealing off the crawlspace vents an
covering all of it with a vapor barrier may have some unknown negatives
that nobody speaks of (a drain is going to be placed int the perimeter of
the crawlspace and drained to the outside

this sealing off the crawlspace idea I found here
http://www.basementsystems.com/. Has anyone used this system and what were
your experiences ? Positive ones and especially negative ones are welcome.

Thankyou
Anita

On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 02:42:53 GMT, someone wrote:

Our house is kind of at the bottom of a slope and a lot of the water flows
towards the house, we had a crawlspace encapsulation person come in and
check out our crawl space,

When you only tool is a hammer, every problem is a nail. Get someone
to come in whose job is NOT "crawlspace encapsulation" (whatever the
heck that is).

he says the foundation is letting in water
through because the driveway is loke a funnel. From what I understand we
can actually prevent that by putting in trench drains in the driveway to
take wateraway from the house.

That would be where to start. Prevent water from running against and
pooling against the house to begin with. Guy I know, got a helluva
deal on a house with a history of frequent basement flooding. He had
some gutter and grading work done - and it NEVER FLOODED AGAIN.


My main worry is the theory that the
crawlspace needs to be sealed off. I've read all the articles speaking both
for and against sealing off vents.

Try to fix the drainage first. It may then moot the second Q. BTW,
why DO people want to close the vents if the crawl is damp? Seems
like the last thing that I'd wanna do - depending on what's down
there, which wouldn't seem to be much if its wet.


Reply to NG only - this e.mail address goes to a kill file.