The Role of Crawl Spaces in Mold and Radon Control

Can your crawl space be the key to a healthier home? Join us as we uncover this often overlooked aspect of home maintenance with expert Michael Church from Crawl Space Ninja. Michael's journey from an indoor air quality specialist to a crawl space encapsulation guru reveals surprising insights about how the air you breathe in your living space is directly impacted by what’s happening beneath your floors. Discover why simply laying down plastic or fiberglass isn’t enough and how proper air sealing, insulation, and humidity control are essential for a healthier living environment.

Check out Michael's book, "Crawl Space Repair Myths-Busted" now available on Amazon!

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In this episode, Michael demystifies the stack effect and its role in bringing mold, radon, and high humidity from your crawl space into your home. He shares eye-opening truths about mold remediation, emphasizing that even dead mold can trigger allergic reactions. If you’re tired of sneezing and watery eyes, this conversation is a must-listen. Michael's holistic approach to crawl space problems offers actionable steps to improve your home's air quality, transforming it into the sanctuary it should be. Tune in to learn how tackling your crawl space can lead to a healthier, happier home.

Transcript

Speaker 0: 0:00

Michael Church, crawl Space Ninja. Today's crawl space misconception video is that is your home's indoor air quality truly affected by the crawl space? Many years ago when I got involved in crawl space encapsulation, I actually was more focused on indoor air quality in the home than I was encapsulating the crawl spaces. I went through mold certifications, voc lectures, all these things. You know materials that you put in your home they off gas toxins from time to time. Some of the toxins eventually go away, for example, the new car smell that everybody loves. You know those are VOCs. Those are things that can affect someone with a compromised immune system.

Speaker 0: 0:43

So whenever we started Crawl Space Ninja, we wanted to bring the correction of indoor air quality to crawl space encapsulation, which is why we have our certain methodologies and things like that to address air quality. So we're not just going in and throwing down plastic, we're not just going in and throwing up fiberglass. We want to approach the crawl space from a holistic point of view to do proper air sealing, proper insulation, proper humidity control, addressing the mold issue properly, and all of that because all of those things affect indoor air quality. How does it affect indoor air quality? It's called the stack effect Anything that's in your crawl space. If you had a dead animal in your crawl space and they began to rot, you're going to smell that up in your living space. That shows you the effect of the stack effect to the indoor air quality. Same with mold. If you have mold growing in the crawl space, it will make its way into the living space. If you have radon in the crawl space, it will make its way into the living space. If you have radon in the crawl space, it will make its way into the living space. High humidity in the crawl space makes its way into the living space. We've done a few videos about how viruses and germs and bacterias can thrive in either high humid or low humid environments.

Speaker 0: 1:59

If those things are of a concern to you, then you want to make sure you address the crawl space properly. There's a lot of companies out there that they'll just squirt the mold with a disinfectant without following the rules or the guidelines of the disinfectant, which clearly tell the contractor to remove the mold, because even dead mold is an allergen and can affect you or your family's health. So if you think that addressing the crawl space is just a waste of money because it doesn't really do a whole lot for your living space. It may do more than what you realize by improving the indoor air quality, because your home is your sanctuary. When you come home from work, you want to be at a place that you don't have to worry about sneezing and watery eyes and all that kind of stuff and and of course there's outside allergens that can affect you as well. But taking care of that crawl space is going to improve your indoor air quality when it's done correctly. We hope you'll do that.

Speaker 0: 2:55

I'm Michael Church crawl space. Ninja, we hope you make it a happy and blessed day and we'll see you later.