Hi,

I have some crawlspace vents near the base of the house that are 16x9.
I am getting sandbags and plastic ready in case, but I read that
cutting plywood
boards to place up against the brick, and then seal, is a good thing
as well.
I know I could get some weatherstriping and stick it around the edge
of the plywood,
then place plastic, then sandbags.

However, after looking at doordam.com, and reading that they recommend
putting
a bead of DAP around the edge of their product to protect against
seepage, I was
wondering about doing the same thing around the crawlspace areas.

Is there a sealant that I could place on the plywood in an extra thick
bead, and then just press it
up against the vent, secure it with a sandbag, that would allow for
easy removal
later? I'm assuming that the DAP would have to be applied way ahead of
time for it to dry,
but I might be in a position where I would not have a 12 hr dry time.

I know that there is a sealant for roofs that will provide a 'wet
seal' in the rain, but it is
like tar and might stain the brick. Or would this be ok?

Also, there is one crawlspace vent near the HVAC that has a power box
above it and a thick
cable comes from the box and goes through the vent, making the
placement of a board
difficult. Could I just seal up this vent without any problem? This
would leave 6 other open
vents, and two of them are fairly near this one with the cable. What
would be a good material
to seal it up with that I could do myself? It is on the back of the
house so cosmetics are not
that important.


thanks,

itchy

On Mar 12, 12:33*pm, internaughtfull
wrote:
Hi,

I have some crawlspace vents near the base of the house that are 16x9.
I am getting sandbags and plastic ready in case, but *I read that
cutting plywood
boards to place up against the brick, and then seal, is a good thing
as well.
I know I could get some weatherstriping and stick it around the edge
of the plywood,
then place plastic, then sandbags.

However, after looking at doordam.com, and reading that they recommend
putting
a bead of DAP around the edge of their product to protect against
seepage, I was
wondering about doing the same thing around the crawlspace areas.

Is there a sealant that I could place on the plywood in an extra thick
bead, and then just press it
up against the vent, secure it with a sandbag, that would allow for
easy removal
later? I'm assuming that the DAP would have to be applied way ahead of
time for it to dry,
but I might be in a position where I would not have a 12 hr dry time.

I know that there is a sealant for roofs that will provide a 'wet
seal' in the rain, but it is
like tar and might stain the brick. Or would this be ok?

Also, there is one crawlspace vent near the HVAC that has a power box
above it and a thick
cable comes from the box and goes through the vent, making the
placement of a board
difficult. Could I just seal up this vent without any problem? This
would leave 6 other open
vents, and two of them are fairly near this one with the cable. What
would be a good material
to seal it up with that I could do myself? It is on the back of the
house so cosmetics are not
that important.

thanks,

itchy

seepage you can try to seal out, if its flood water you cant expect
the structure around the crawlspace to withstand the water pressure,
it can collapse the building. thats why you often see a flooding home
with doors open letting the water in, to prevent structural damage.

so good luck with the sand bags, dont even try to seal water out, it
could move your home off its foundation

On Mar 12, 12:33*pm, internaughtfull
wrote:
Hi,

I have some crawlspace vents near the base of the house that are 16x9.
I am getting sandbags and plastic ready in case, but *I read that
cutting plywood
boards to place up against the brick, and then seal, is a good thing
as well.
I know I could get some weatherstriping and stick it around the edge
of the plywood,
then place plastic, then sandbags.

However, after looking at doordam.com, and reading that they recommend
putting
a bead of DAP around the edge of their product to protect against
seepage, I was
wondering about doing the same thing around the crawlspace areas.

Is there a sealant that I could place on the plywood in an extra thick
bead, and then just press it
up against the vent, secure it with a sandbag, that would allow for
easy removal
later? I'm assuming that the DAP would have to be applied way ahead of
time for it to dry,
but I might be in a position where I would not have a 12 hr dry time.

I know that there is a sealant for roofs that will provide a 'wet
seal' in the rain, but it is
like tar and might stain the brick. Or would this be ok?

Also, there is one crawlspace vent near the HVAC that has a power box
above it and a thick
cable comes from the box and goes through the vent, making the
placement of a board
difficult. Could I just seal up this vent without any problem? This
would leave 6 other open
vents, and two of them are fairly near this one with the cable. What
would be a good material
to seal it up with that I could do myself? It is on the back of the
house so cosmetics are not
that important.

thanks,

itchy

I would not get too concerned with forming a perfect, watertight seal
around the crawlspace vents. It's likely a fair amount of water is
going to find it's way through various cracks, holes, etc around the
whole perimeter. Your objective is to greatly reduce the amount of
water that can flow in, not eliminate it. To seal between the brick
and plywood I would use some auto body putty, which should be
available at local auto parts stores. It's kind of like plumber's
putty. Grey, pliable, never hardens and you can form it in your hands
into long round pieces. Easy to remove later.

Also, I don't know how high the crawlspace wall is or what condition
it is in. But at some point, another factor comes into play. And
that is that if you have
3 ft of water pushing against an old brick wall with nothing on the
other side, it becomes a lot of force and could cause the wall to
collapse in. Meaning it might be better to let the water in and deal
with that.

"internaughtfull" wrote in message
...
Hi,

I have some crawlspace vents near the base of the house that are 16x9.
I am getting sandbags and plastic ready in case, but I read that
cutting plywood
boards to place up against the brick, and then seal, is a good thing
as well.
I know I could get some weatherstriping and stick it around the edge
of the plywood,
then place plastic, then sandbags.

However, after looking at doordam.com, and reading that they recommend
putting
a bead of DAP around the edge of their product to protect against
seepage, I was
wondering about doing the same thing around the crawlspace areas.

Is there a sealant that I could place on the plywood in an extra thick
bead, and then just press it
up against the vent, secure it with a sandbag, that would allow for
easy removal
later? I'm assuming that the DAP would have to be applied way ahead of
time for it to dry,
but I might be in a position where I would not have a 12 hr dry time.

I suspect the point of the DAP is that it doesn't dry, so is easily removable.
You could use plumber's putty perhaps.

internaughtfull wrote:
Hi,

I have some crawlspace vents near the base of the house that are 16x9.
I am getting sandbags and plastic ready in case, but I read that
cutting plywood
boards to place up against the brick, and then seal, is a good thing
as well.
I know I could get some weatherstriping and stick it around the edge
of the plywood,
then place plastic, then sandbags.

However, after looking at doordam.com, and reading that they recommend
putting
a bead of DAP around the edge of their product to protect against
seepage, I was
wondering about doing the same thing around the crawlspace areas.

Is there a sealant that I could place on the plywood in an extra thick
bead, and then just press it
up against the vent, secure it with a sandbag, that would allow for
easy removal
later? I'm assuming that the DAP would have to be applied way ahead of
time for it to dry,
but I might be in a position where I would not have a 12 hr dry time.

I know that there is a sealant for roofs that will provide a 'wet
seal' in the rain, but it is
like tar and might stain the brick. Or would this be ok?

Also, there is one crawlspace vent near the HVAC that has a power box
above it and a thick
cable comes from the box and goes through the vent, making the
placement of a board
difficult. Could I just seal up this vent without any problem? This
would leave 6 other open
vents, and two of them are fairly near this one with the cable. What
would be a good material
to seal it up with that I could do myself? It is on the back of the
house so cosmetics are not
that important.



Why do you want to keep water out of the crawl space?

If I had that issue, I'd crawl in the crawl space and dig a pit - not very
large, but enough to act as a reservoir. Then I'd get a pump...

[...]

[...]

Is there a sealant that I could place on the plywood in an extra thick
bead, and then just press it
up against the vent, secure it with a sandbag, that would allow for
easy removal
later? [...]

I would not get too concerned with forming a perfect, watertight seal
around the crawlspace vents. * [...]


Also, I don't know how high the crawlspace wall is or what condition
it is in. * But at some point, another factor comes into play. * And
that is that if you have
3 ft of water pushing against an old brick wall with nothing on the
other side, it becomes a lot of force and could cause the wall to
collapse in. * Meaning it might be better to let the water in and deal
with that.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I'm basically guarding against a 50 yr event, which would amount to
maybe 6-8" of water.
The crawlspace is small, you can barely squeeze under there to install
ductwork, I know
the HVAC guys were kidding me about it.

I wanted to seal out water because I heard it could rise through the
floor into the house, but
after thinking about it, that would be a lot more than 6-8" of water.
Maybe the quickest way would be to put up plastic tarp, then a board,
then a few sandbags,
if seepage is unavoidable. I'm not in a flash flood area, so the creek
rising would
be fairly slow and likely would allow me enough time to place the
bags. Thanks for the advice everybody.

itchy

On Sat, 12 Mar 2011 09:33:09 -0800 (PST), internaughtfull
wrote:


I have some crawlspace vents near the base of the house that are 16x9.
I am getting sandbags and plastic ready in case, but I read that
cutting plywood
boards to place up against the brick, and then seal, is a good thing
as well.
I know I could get some weatherstriping and stick it around the edge
of the plywood,
then place plastic, then sandbags.

If I were to do something like this, I'd just glue a piece of foam
rubber on the whole piece of wood. It's not like there's a window in
the middle that you have to see through. And you're not going to want
to spend a lot of time positioning the wood when the flood is coming.
For one thing, you won't start until it's near, and there will be many
other things to do.

But....if the window isflooding on the outside of the house, the
ground beneath it on the will soon be saturated on the outside of the
foundation, and the crawlspace will be getting water right after that.

Maybe before that, depending on when the saturation occurs.

Am I not right?

I have a stream behind my house that can rise 10 feet in 16 hours, and
has risen to one inch from and one inch below my property line. So
I've thought about stuff like this. Every time I see floodign on
the news. FTR don't have a crawlspace, just a basement.

I've even thought about renting an excavator at the last minute, to
open up the channel downstream from my house, to prevent the flood
from reachign my house, but there are several reasons not to do that.
It's all private property, the bottle-neck, the channel is all rock,
I've never driven an excavator, I can't tow it, they probably can't
deliver it in time; they'd have to deliver it to someone else's
propert (the swim club down stream from me, that I don't belong to and
woudlnt' join.), if it gets that high it floods their parking lot
which is wide, so maybe there's not much point to widening the
channel.

On Mar 16, 12:03*am, mm wrote:
On Sat, 12 Mar 2011 09:33:09 -0800 (PST), internaughtfull

wrote:

I have some crawlspace vents near the base of the house that are 16x9.
I am getting sandbags and plastic ready in case, but *I read that
cutting plywood
boards to place up against the brick, and then seal, is a good thing
as well.
I know I could get some weatherstriping and stick it around the edge
of the plywood,
then place plastic, then sandbags.

If I were to do something like this, I'd just glue a piece of foam
rubber on the whole piece of wood. *[...]

That's not a bad idea, maybe that stick on weather stripping that
people use on miami windows, its 1/4 to 1/2 " foam. That plus
the bags, plastic, sounds fairly good.


[...]

I have a stream behind my house that can rise 10 feet in 16 hours, and
has risen to one inch from and one inch *below my property line. *So
I've thought about stuff like this. *[...]


I've even thought about renting an excavator at the last minute, to
open up the channel downstream from my house, to prevent the flood
from reachign my house, but there are several reasons not to do that.
It's all private property, [...]

Yes I thought it amusing that the city said 'this is on you' to figure
out
but if I dug anything around the bank, then I had to get a permit to
do so.
They did help though in creating a better ditch line toward the vent
pipe
that empties into the creek however, taxes at work.
You could always look at a decorative/functional retaining wall to
simply
divert the water away from your property at flood time. A good mason
could do it. Probably expensive though.

On Thu, 17 Mar 2011 07:38:16 -0700 (PDT), internaughtfull
wrote:

On Mar 16, 12:03*am, mm wrote:
On Sat, 12 Mar 2011 09:33:09 -0800 (PST), internaughtfull

wrote:

I have some crawlspace vents near the base of the house that are 16x9.
I am getting sandbags and plastic ready in case, but *I read that
cutting plywood
boards to place up against the brick, and then seal, is a good thing
as well.
I know I could get some weatherstriping and stick it around the edge
of the plywood,
then place plastic, then sandbags.

If I were to do something like this, I'd just glue a piece of foam
rubber on the whole piece of wood. *[...]

That's not a bad idea, maybe that stick on weather stripping that
people use on miami windows, its 1/4 to 1/2 " foam.

Don't attribute that to me. That's what I was saying NOT to use.
There is no reason to make it that narrow, providing less area to hold
back the water and less area to to glue the foam to the wood with.
And you can probably buy sheets of foam almost as cheaply, if you
provide your own glue and don't expect it rolled up and in a box. If
it is foamy on one side but sheet-like on the other, you can glue to
the sheet-like side, although I've also glued to the foamy side, the
side with open holes.

That plus
the bags, plastic, sounds fairly good.


[...]

I have a stream behind my house that can rise 10 feet in 16 hours, and
has risen to one inch from and one inch *below my property line. *So
I've thought about stuff like this. *[...]


I've even thought about renting an excavator at the last minute, to
open up the channel downstream from my house, to prevent the flood
from reachign my house, but there are several reasons not to do that.
It's all private property, [...]

Yes I thought it amusing that the city said 'this is on you' to figure
out
but if I dug anything around the bank, then I had to get a permit to
do so.
They did help though in creating a better ditch line toward the vent
pipe
that empties into the creek however, taxes at work.
You could always look at a decorative/functional retaining wall to
simply
divert the water away from your property at flood time. A good mason
could do it. Probably expensive though.