crawl space vapor barrier question

8 years ago

Hi! Our home is 20 years old and we've been told that our state (NC) now requires a vapor barrier to cover 100% of your crawl space. Our current barrier only covers 80%. The moisture reading of the wood in our crawl is only 12%.

- Should we upgrade our barrier and cover 100%?

- Does a barrier need to be "taped" to the walls & footers? (if you're not encapsulating?)

- Who would we contact to put this in for us? (Our crawl isn't very high - not a good decision for our backs!) Or, could we buy the material (where?) and have a HS/college student do it?

Thanks for any information you have !

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Comment (1)

User
8 years ago
The crawl space treatment we used for the Habitat houses I helped build consisted of thick(6 mil) plastic sheets glued together(special glue) and then glued to the foundation(again special glue for the concrete in our homes) and glued around intrusions(pipes/etc.).

Now, the actual reason for that installation was part of the radon mitigating system built into the house. But, it would work for your situation. We did the install using volunteers with minimal training---basically how to overlap the sheets and glue. There should be videos on You Tube illustrating the process. Look up passive radon mitigating systems.
Diana Brown thanked User
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