Crawl Space Ninja Show
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 Show
DIY Crawl Space Guide: Mastering Moisture Control Week 3
Ready to tackle the critical but often overlooked step in crawl space renovation? In week three of our Crawl Space Repair Challenge, we're diving deep into the proper installation of dehumidifiers and condensate pumps—essential components for creating a dry, healthy environment beneath your home.
Moisture control is the cornerstone of crawl space remediation, and this comprehensive guide walks you through everything from selecting the right commercial-grade equipment to determining optimal placement for maximum efficiency. I'm sharing professional insights on humidity targets (aim for 45-55%), wood moisture levels (9-15% is ideal), and how to interpret often misleading dehumidifier specifications. You'll discover why you can't actually "oversize" a dehumidifier and how larger units can save you money through improved efficiency.
For homeowners with larger or compartmentalized crawl spaces, I explain effective air circulation strategies using supplemental fans. We also explore various water discharge options suitable for different climate conditions, from simple exterior drainage to specialized dry wells below the frost line. Whether you're a DIY enthusiast or just want to understand what professionals should be doing in your crawl space, this episode provides the knowledge you need to make informed decisions about moisture control.
Check out Michael's book, "Crawl Space Repair Myths-Busted" now available on Amazon!
Schedule a consultation: https://buymeacoffee.com/csninja/extras
Need help: https://crawlspaceninja.com or https://diy.crawlspaceninja.com
Hey there, michael Church, crawl Space Ninja. I want to welcome you to week three of our Crawl Space Repair Challenge. This is installing a dehumidifier and a condensate pump. Got some great information to share with you, so let's get started. What we're going to cover in this video is we're going to talk about the tools needed to install a dehumidifier and a condensate pump. Where to get those tools and items, why this should be part of the phase one process of encapsulating your crawl space. What is the best humidity setting for the dehumidifier and why can you oversize a dehumidifier. The best placement for maximum efficiency of that dehumidifier, moving air in large and broken up areas to assist in the dehumidification process. Some water discharge tips and as well as cold climate considerations. Items you're going to need and I've got links in the description down below of this video if you want to check these out.
Speaker 0:You're going to need a dehumidifier. We always recommend you get a commercial grade dehumidifier that's designed for crawl spaces or harsh environments. You may need a ducting kit and a fan, which we'll go into later. You're going to need blocks to put the dehumidifier on or at least a hang kit. Hang kits normally will be installed from the subfloor and gets it off the floor, which is a nice feature, but sometimes can be a little rattly in the subfloor, so be mindful of that. You're going to need some pea gravel and a condensate pump. We always recommend you use a condensate pump with a crawl space dehumidifier, because chances are it is the lowest part of the house, unless you're in a cold climate situation, which we will talk about later. You're going to need some nylon hose, barbs, some materials for a dry well to put the condensate outside the crawl space and some concrete sealant and more.
Speaker 0:Some of the tools, simple tools. You're going to need drills, screwdriver, utility knife, hacksaw, pipe cutter, a level to make sure that dehumidifier and condensate pump are level. You're also going to need a rotary hammer to get through that block wall to run that discharge line, and a caulk gun to fill in parts where you drilled through your block wall or your foundation wall. You're going to need a wheelbarrow, a shovel and a sled, and also electrical. If you don't have an outlet down there to run the dehumidifier, you're going to need to install that as well.
Speaker 0:So why make this part of the phase one? As you can see in this picture right here, we got a lot of mold present. We got stalactiting of the insulation. All that is a sign of a serious moisture problem. You should have already, by the time you get to installing the dehu, removed the insulation and sealed the vents.
Speaker 0:Remember, part of the phase one is to dry the crawl space and there are different steps that go into the phase one, which is removing the insulation, sealing the vents and installing this dehumidifier and condensate pump. And you may want to make sure you have plastic down on the ground, even if it's just the old loose lay vapor barrier that came with the house. If you pull that out prematurely then the dehumidifier is going to try to dry the ground as well as the wood. We want to get that wood moisture level low. We want to get the humidity in the crawl space low. This is why you should make this part of the phase one process. I want to mention, if you haven't already checked out week one and week two of this crawl space repair challenge, then I recommend you do that Also. Let me know down in the comments if you have watched those other videos. I'd love to hear from you and what you're thinking of this series so far.
Speaker 0:So what is the best humidity and wood moisture level of the crawl space. Well, basically, the ASHRAE folks came up with this chart many years ago and it shows if your house is too dry, if it's too moist. It gives you some indications of what can happen in those scenarios and we can see that a too dry house can have high levels of bacteria, viruses, respiratory infections, allergic rhinitis, asthma and ozone productions. When a house that is too moist can grow different types of bacteria and viruses. It can grow mold or what they call fungi. Huge dust mite populations grow in moist houses and you can still have asthma, allergic rhinitis and chemical interactions. Which is interesting, that's a lot of the off-gassings of the VOCs from your building supplies can be seen in too moist of an environment.
Speaker 0:What we say at Crawl Space Ninja is the best humidity level. Not the perfect humidity level, but the best humidity level is between 45% and 55%. So when you install that dehumidifier in your crawl space, I'm going to recommend you set it at a set point of 50 percent. That way it will keep that 45 and 55 percent range, which we feel is optimal, as well as dry out the wood. Depending on the types of wood you're looking at, you may go between a 9 to 15 percent moisture level of the wood, typically your hard oaks will be lower, your pines will be a little higher. So 9 to 15% moisture level of the wood Typically your hard oaks will be lower, your pines will be a little higher. So 9 to 15% tends to be a really good level. But if you keep that humidity setting at 50%, it will reach equilibrium in the wood and keep the wood dry. Plus, if you get a plumbing leak from above, it will start to dry out that wood as it's leaking and keep it from spreading all across the subfloor.
Speaker 0:Is it possible to oversize a dehumidifier? According to the dehumidifier manufacturers I've spoken to, it is not possible to oversize a dehumidifier because if you set it on 50%, once it reaches that level it's going to turn off. Now why is this an advantage? A larger dehumidifier not only covers more area but will dry the area quicker and more efficiently. That way it gets to that set point faster. The quicker it gets to that set point, the more efficient the dehumidifier is, which means it's using less energy to get to that level and it's going to save you money over time. And of course, a larger dehumidifier capacity will cover more square footage. If you've got a 1500 square foot crawl space and a 1500 square foot living space, then a larger dehumidifier will help keep both of those spaces dry through the stack effect. The other thing is is dehumidifier will help keep both of those spaces dry through the stack effect? The other thing is is dehumidifier sizing from the manufacturers typically is based on an eight foot ceiling. So, for example, an Aprilaire E70 currently is rated at 2,200 square feet, which is based on an eight foot ceiling. Technically, you could get more capacity out of that dehumidifier if you put it in a three foot crawl space, so it could do a larger square footage. As long as that crawl space is not broken up and has plenty of air movement, you might be able to do a 25, 2,800 square foot crawl space with that dehumidifier.
Speaker 0:So let's talk about pints per day and claims that are made by dehumidifiers. As I mentioned before, the Aprilaire E70 is a 70-pint dehumidifier. Well, you need to be mindful if you are buying dehumidifiers on internet stores that the claims can be misleading in the headlines. This is one example that I pulled off of an online store and it says that it covers 120-pint of crawl space dehumidifier. It's very energy efficient. It's giving you all the sales features, but whenever you read down in the small print, it actually says removes 55 pints per day at AHAM rating and 120 pints per day at saturation. That is a misleading claim. If you're comparing this dehumidifier to the E70, which is labeled as 70 pints per day at AHAM, if we wanted to go the saturation level technically, the E70 could do 150, 160 pints per day. So why is that significant?
Speaker 0:Well, let's talk about what AHAM and all these ratings are. There are basically three different types of ratings that I'm going to share with you. There's the AHAM, the DOE and the saturation. So AHAM is from the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers and it rates dehumidifiers based on a test parameter of 80 degrees Fahrenheit and 60 percent relative humidity. The Department of Energy rating, the DOE rating, rates a dehumidifier based on a test parameter of 65 degree and 60% relative humidity. Let's talk about those two differences. 80 degrees and 60% relative humidity has more moisture in it, more grains per pound of moisture in a pound of air than 65 degrees and 60% relative humidity will hold. So, for example, there's more water to pull out of the air at 80 degrees than there is at 65 degrees.
Speaker 0:So let's talk about that saturation rating mentioned in the previous slide, with the dehumidifier that said 120 pints per day If it's rated at a saturation level. According to AHAM, saturation level is 90% relative humidity and 90 degrees, which means there is a ton of water in the air to pull from, which is why any dehumidifier that is in an environment that's 90% humidity and 90 degrees will pull more air. But according to the AHAM folks, most dehumidifiers will never face these conditions. This testing aims to determine the maximum amount of moisture that can be removed from the air. So if you're buying a dehumidifier on an online store that is trying to mislead you because it pulls 120 pints per day saturation level, there's a really good chance your home will never be at that saturation level that it's claiming. So it your home will never be at that saturation level that it's claiming, so it's more likely going to only pull 55 pints per day AHAM rating.
Speaker 0:So now let's cover best placement for the dehumidifier. As you can see right here, we've got the dehumidifier set sort of close to the foundation wall, and the reason why we do that is because we want to put it in a place that's convenient for you to get to, because dehumidifiers do require maintenance, and if you put it way over on the other side of the crawl space and you got to crawl under a bunch of ducks or go through different ways to get there, you're going to not want to go down there and maintenance it, and it should be maintenance about every six months. What you want to do is you want to put the dehumidifier in a spot that's fairly easy to get to and then blow the dry air towards the open space or the larger area of the crawl space. That is one of the best ways to ensure you're maximizing its drying capability for placement. Now let's talk about moving air to assist with drying. Basically, there's two schools of thought here that I want to share with you. There is moving internal air of the crawl space, and then there is moving air from the crawl space to outside the crawl space through exhaust fans. So what I'm going to mention here is using this whisper fan on the bottom left side to circulate air through the crawl space.
Speaker 0:This is great if you have a really large crawl space or a broken up crawl space, for example, if you got foundation walls or your home was built in sections. Let's say it was built in 1960 and then you had a couple of add-ons. Well, chances are you've got broken up crawl spaces down there and it would be nice to have some type of fan circulating that dry air all throughout the crawl space. So I wanna take the dry air so I would install this fan near the dehumidifier and then blow the air to the furthest reaches of the crawl space where the wet air is, so that way it'll begin to dry it out. So the whole point of ventilating the air throughout the crawl space is to keep the humidity levels, even in those larger crawl spaces. If you have a small crawl space probably less than 1,000, 1,500 square feet you may not need to ventilate. But if you got a large crawl space 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 square feet adding fans to ventilate would be a good idea. And of course, exhaust fans, which we're going to cover later in this series, are designed to remove soil gases, not necessarily to ventilate crawl spaces, but you can use them to help move air or dry air as well.
Speaker 0:And one last thing I want to mention we do have a new whisper fan available on our DIY store. Here's some of the specs on it Very quiet, smooth operation, used in bathrooms, basements and attics as well. It's got a five-year warranty, 135 cubic feet per minute, it's got a four-inch intake and output and it's energy star rating. The funny thing about this fan is you can take it apart and leave all of the collars hooked up. If you get a chance, check out this fan. If it goes bad. You don't have to unhook all of your ducting. You just take out the center part and get that repaired and then hook it right back up. It's a really, really cool fan that we're listing on our DIY store.
Speaker 0:Okay, so where do you discharge that water? I recommend you put it outside if you can. If you got a sump pump located in the crawl space, you can discharge that condensation from the dehu right into that sump pump and let it take it out. If you don't have a sump pump just like this gentleman here has these downspout extensions you can drill through the foundation wall. You can plug that condensate line right into that downspout extension if you want to, that's an easy way to do it. If you want to, that's an easy way to do it. Or you can build what's called a dry well on the far right. That's a cool dry well right there. So we would typically perforate that dry well. They come pre-made. Nds, for example, makes these. You can get these all over the place. I'll put a link to one down below.
Speaker 0:You can run that sump pump line or that discharge line into that dry well and cover it with gravel and fill the dirt on top of it so that way you never have to worry about the condensation. That would work in a cold or warm climate. If you got a frost line that you're dealing with, you put that dry well down below the frost line. If you don't want to do that, some of our homeowners up in those Minnesota, wisconsin, canada climates, I have heard of them doing a dry well under the plastic of the crawl space itself. I'm not a big fan of that. I'd rather you do the dry well on the right. But if you're limited on getting the moisture out of the crawl space, then I would do something like this inside the crawl space. That way you could drain that water and get it out of the crawl space.
Speaker 0:Here are some recommended videos I encourage you to check out that are in line with this topic. We've got our six places to install a dehumidifier. Did you know there's probably six places in your house? You need to control humidity. You got discharge line set up. I got a video about that and we also got dehus and multi-section crawlspaces. That would be one of those crawlspaces that have a broken up foundation or add-ons or things like that. If you get a chance to check out these videos, I highly recommend it. Again, thanks for watching this video.
Speaker 0:If you haven't checked out my book, crawl Space Repair Misbusted it's on Amazoncom. If you want to get that book, I hope you like and subscribe to our channel and please comment below what you think about this series. Is this helpful to you all? And if you'd like to do a one-on-one consultation with me? We've also got some other things like an autographed copy of our book and different things on the Buy Me A Coffee page. I've got that in the description down below, but it's real easy BuyMeACoffeecom. Forward. Slash CSNinja. I am Michael Church with Crawl Space Ninja. I hope you make it a happy and blessed day and I'll see you later.