Crawl Space Ninja Podcast with Michael Church
Welcome to "Healthy Home ABCs with Michael Church," where we dive into the essentials of improving indoor air quality. Learn practical tips for fixing your attic, basement, and crawl space to create a healthier home environment.
Crawl Space Ninja Podcast with Michael Church
Maximize Crawl Space Defense with DIY Pump Strategies Episode 1 of 2
Unlock the secrets to transforming your home with insights from Michael Kushler, a DIY enthusiast who tackled the challenges of his crawl space in Northern Virginia head-on. We promise you'll walk away with practical tips on improving crawl space functionality and avoiding costly professional interventions. Michael's story is one of grit and resourcefulness. Faced with mold, water intrusion, and ineffective storage, he took matters into his own hands, guided by the expertise of Crawl Space Ninja. Discover how he upgraded his sump pump system, installed a battery backup, and regraded his driveway to protect his home from water damage, all while emphasizing the crucial role of regular maintenance.
In a compelling follow-up, we break down the essentials of sump pump installation and upkeep, focusing on the necessity of having both primary and backup systems. Join us as we recount a real-life episode where a backup sump pump prevented a flooding disaster during a power outage. From addressing potential cold-weather issues like frozen discharge lines to assessing your home's unique needs, we cover it all. Learn why multiple pumps might be necessary for larger crawl spaces, especially those near bodies of water, and how a little preparation can save you from a deluge of trouble. Whether you're a seasoned DIYer or just starting, this episode equips you with the knowledge to keep your home safe and dry.
Check out Michael's book, "Crawl Space Repair Myths-Busted" now available on Amazon!
Need help: https://crawlspaceninja.com or https://diy.crawlspaceninja.com
Okay, michael Church here with Michael Kushler and I'm going to talk to him today. He's done his own crawl space. He's one of the DIY ninjas out there and we're going to share with you a little bit about what he's done, so stay tuned. All right, so if you're new to Crawl Space Ninja, we talk about everything related to basements, attics, crawl spaces and duct work, and we got a special guest with us today, michael and Michael tell us a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 2:Sure, thank you, michael, for having me on. My name's Michael Kushler. I live here in the Northern Virginia area. I've been following Crawl Space Ninjas for a long time, which prompted me to start my own DIY project in a crawl space that needed a lot of work, so happy to be on here today.
Speaker 1:Well, we appreciate you coming, Michael, and just so you know, that is not a picture of his background, of his crawl space. Behind him he's literally in his crawl space right now, talking to us, and just wanted to. You know, it's amazing to see some of these videos and things of people like yourself that have decided to tackle their own crawl space. We get a lot of people that send us pictures and everything. We thought that you had a unique situation, so please go into some of the problems you were having and tell us why you decided to do your crawl space. Michael, what was the thing that prompted you to invest your time and money to fix a part of your house that I assume you don't hang out in, right? I mean, this is unless you made a crawl cave, right? That may be a new thing. Instead of a man cave, we'll call it a crawl cave, right? So tell us a little bit about that please, certainly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm definitely in here a lot more often than I used to be, that's for sure. We bought this house about three years ago and at that time we liked everything else about the house. We knew the crawl space needed some work, but we were new homeowners and so didn't really know the extent of work that it might need. We were new homeowners and so didn't really know the extent of work that it might need, but, as you saw in some of the before pictures I showed you, you know, the insulation that they had in here was fiberglass bat insulation. It looked very, very dirty and possibly moldy. We had some minor water intrusion issues as well. Anytime it rained really heavy, there was an existing vapor barrier that was laid down, but there were places where it was kind of squishy, a little bit like a water bed after really heavy rains. So I knew that we definitely needed to take a look and do some work on it, started researching prices to get a professional company in to do the work and decided it was worthwhile to do the research myself Our crawl space is about 425 feet, so not a huge job and found you, michael, and your company online through YouTube, dove right down into that hole, learning everything I could from you guys and really appreciate all the information that you put out there, because we had I mean, you name it, we had water intrusion.
Speaker 2:The more I looked into it, we had some mold growth up in the rim joists in particular. We didn't have any useful insulation. We had to rip all of that out and just generally, the crawl space wasn't usable for storage either. We had put some things into storage here, not understanding that the humidity level was really high, and ended up having to throw out a bunch of pictures that had gotten a little bit moldy, things like that. So we knew we had to do something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a common practice here. People tend to put things that you wouldn't think about and then they'll put the lawnmower in the crawl space, right. So the thing about the lawnmower is you got all those grass clippings all inside the lawnmower, so you take something that's wet and nasty and throw it in an environment and then those grass clippings start to grow mold and then they affect, or infect, if you will, everything else inside of the crawl space. I don't know if you did that particularly, but you don't need a catalyst like that to grow mold in a crawl space. All you need is the moisture and the humidity to be high, and you said you had standing water as well. You had flooding coming in.
Speaker 2:We had yeah, we had some water coming in. It was under the vapor barrier but we could feel it like a waterbed kind of squishing back and forth.
Speaker 1:You had quite a bit then. So, uh, now, is that, uh, is that a sump pump? I see there behind you, next to the dq. Is that a battery backup? Is that what that is?
Speaker 2:yeah, that was. That was one of the first things I did. We had an older sump pump that came with the house, so bought, bought the new sump pump, bought a battery backup, um, which I can say paid for itself immediately. We had a power outage when that battery backup was going off. That was really good. But the first thing I started to do, too, was take a look at where water might be coming in close to the foundation. So we got downspout extenders, things like that. But also we realized that the driveway that we had it slopes down towards the house, towards one of the corners of the house, and so anytime we had really heavy rain it was just like a luge for water that was coming down that way. So the first thing we did was, you know, regrade and redo that driveway so that the water was going in the right direction. That really resolved the water intrusion issue. We have French drains around the perimeter here that go to the sump pump, but I think at that time it was just overwhelming the system that we had Right.
Speaker 1:So even with a interior French drain system in the crawl space, that driveway was still putting on more water than the system could handle. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, exactly. So that's a good point and I want all the viewers to understand that. You know an interior waterproofing system, whether it's a basement or a crawl space, could still take on more water than just because of the downspouts like you're talking about. Around in Knoxville we've got a lot of mountainous areas, so you've got a big, huge hill behind you that's pouring water onto your houses and things like that. So it's a good point to go ahead and address the outside as well as the inside, and it sounds like your outside may have fixed it, but a lot of people they need to do both, because once that water finds a way in, it's always going to take the path of least resistance. So the outside is important, but you still should consider the interior as well, and it sounds like you did both, but you did the interior first. Is that?
Speaker 2:right, did the exterior first, to make sure-. Oh, did the exterior first to make sure that the water wasn't coming. We then weren't having any standing water issues and then started handling the interior, starting with making sure we control the humidity, get a new sump pump in there, and then tackled the brave new world of putting up the vapor barrier and insulation around the walls and then redoing the vapor barrier myself too.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's great. That's great. Real quick I want to go back to your battery backup.
Speaker 2:You said it was one of the best investments you made. Can you elaborate a little?
Speaker 1:bit on that, because it's astonishing to me that people will go through the time and the effort and the expense of putting in a sump pump without a battery backup. So do you mind sharing with me what you meant by it was one of your better investments.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I can tell you a couple of quick stories of when it made me realize that it was a good investment. We put it in and it's two sump pumps. We've got the main sump pump and then there's a smaller sump pump, backup sump pump that's hooked up to the battery backup and so that float switch is higher. So if the main sump pump fails for whatever reason and the water continues to rise, then the battery backup kicks on and it sounds an alarm, so that you know it's working and you know to come down and take a look at the main sump pump.
Speaker 2:So we had one incident where, pretty soon after we installed it, we had a power outage and you know, in times of heavy rain that's when you're more likely to have a power outage.
Speaker 2:So the main sump pump wasn't able to run and the battery backup kicked on and, you know, did that for an hour. A couple of different cycles which made me realize, hey, we would have had standing water in the crawl space if we hadn't had that in. There was another time when I heard the battery backup going off and I wasn't sure why that was. It was the middle of winter, it was really cold and what I realized what was happening. I came down and checked the sump pump. The water level had risen and it was just was churning and bubbling like a hot tub in there, and that is because the exit line had frozen and was blocked up and so nothing was getting out. But at least I had that alarm to let me know that there was something wrong, went down there then was able to get the ice out of the exit line and solve that problem too.
Speaker 1:Wow, so that I have. We don't get as cold of winters as you do in Virginia, so we're not dealing with icing up of discharge lines like apparently you are. So that is great information, because I never thought that the icing up of the discharge line would cause that alarm to go off. So that's wonderful that you had that down there. Did you put after it iced up? Did you put anything on the exterior to keep that from happening? Did you modify it in any way? What did you do to fix that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I put some additional insulation around the exterior of it and what it was? It was kind of a. It was a little bit of a freak weather incident. We had a I think they were calling it the bomb cyclone at that time. So it was really cold. It was like 30 below, which isn't consistently that cold here in Virginia. But it prompted me to take a closer look at how much of that drain line was exposed and did some more insulation on there.
Speaker 1:Well, and if you're going to take the time to fix your crawl space, you've got to prepare for those anomalies. If you will. You know, it's kind of like like you fixing the exterior water problem is great, but you know, here in Knoxville in January of 19 and January of 18, we took on five inches of rain in four hours, you know. So you've got to prepare for those things. Now, they said it was once every 10 years and all that. Well, we had it twice in a row. Like two years in a row we had that much rain. So you've got to make sure. Uh, now how you said you got about four or 500 square feet, is that correct?
Speaker 2:That's right, yeah, 425.
Speaker 1:Okay. So one of the things that a homeowner can do is, if you've got a big crawl space, I recommend that you do a sump pump pit and a sump pump about every 140 linear feet. You wouldn't need it in yours because yours is fairly small, right, but when you get a large crawl space you know 1,800, 2,000 and up it's very hard for the water at the far end of that crawl space to make its way all the way to that sump pump. So we encourage you to stagger sump pumps. The counter to that is if you have 400 something square feet, like you've got Michael, but maybe you're near a lake or a body of water where you're taking on a lot of water, or you had that problem with the driveway that you couldn't resolve and you were taking on extra water, then adding another sump pump, even in a smaller crawl space, to handle that extra load is very important.