In the video, you can see our little house in Pacific Grove, California. It’s an older cottage – if you pause the video you can see the historic plaque with the date of 1887. Obviously, many improvements have been made since then, but suffice to say the house was begun a long time ago.
The lot slopes gradually from front to back, as evidenced by the back door up several steps from the level of the back yard.
The slope of the lot is relevant in two important ways:
1. Water flows underground from uphill, beneath the house, and down the slope toward the bay. The grass in our back yard is always green without irrigation of any sort because there is adequate underground water for it. The abundance of underground water flow made our crawlspace very moist.
2. The slope of the lot affords a relatively large vertical clearance in our crawlspace, making access a little easier when working in it.
Our initial efforts to deal with moisture in the crawlspace included working with a contractor whose approach included (1) fans to exhaust the damp air and (2) adding a layer of gravel with the goal of wicking up the moisture in the gravel and drying it with airflow. The two photos below show a typical exhaust fan and the gravel on the floor of the crawlspace.
The fans-and-gravel strategy was expensive but unsuccessful. With it, we continued to experience moisture and mildew odor. When it was necessary for work to be performed in the crawlspace, such as by a plumber or electrician, the disturbance to the gravel and dirt led to mildew odor inside the house that would last typically for a week or so.
We purchased the Clean Crawlspace solution in 2015, and with it, we got exactly the result we wanted.But there is more to our story.
We have a lot of water under our house. The video shows the Clean Crawlspace technician excavating the site for our sump pump. It was very wet and muddy (“a picture is worth a thousand words”).
The completed site of the sump pump is shown in the video. The discharge line connects to the rain gutter downspout system. The outline of the rectangular-shaped sound isolation sheet is visible in the photo. The black electrical cord runs to a dedicated receptacle that we had our electrician install nearby. It’s a really pretty installation. During rainy weather, and then following rains while water is still flowing underground, our sump pump can come on every 40 minutes or so.
We are very happy with our Clean Crawlspace installation. No more moisture and odor.
And whenever tradesmen such as plumbers and electricians need to do work under our house, they typically praise the worker-friendly environment.
With our thanks and best wishes,
John and Louise Fredrickson
John and Louise F. of Pacific Grove, CA
Friday, January 16th
