Vent Covers
Open vents in crawl spaces trap moisture and harbor pests and mold. Permanent vent covers protect your crawl spaces and stop energy waste.
Crawl Space Vent Covers: Protecting Your Home
Vent covers serve the exact purpose as their name suggests – they seal crawl space vents and safeguard your home.
At Groundworks, we utilize CrawlSeal™ Vent Covers, crafted from a 20-mil thick vapor barrier that fits snugly over vent openings. Our vent covers are hassle-free to install and provide long-lasting protection, guaranteeing a convenient, high-quality solution for your needs.
Are you unsure if vent covers are the right solution for your home? Contact a local expert today to learn more.
Why Use Crawl Space Vent Covers?
Crawl space vent covers are an effective solution for managing crawl space ventilation and preventing a range of problems related to moisture, temperature control, and pests. Here, we’ll explore the benefits of using crawl space vent covers and why they are a valuable investment for any homeowner.
Benefits of Crawl Space Vent Covers
One of the primary benefits of crawl space vent covers is that they allow for more cost-efficient temperature control in your home. Vent covers act as an extra insulation layer, preventing air from escaping and entering the crawl space network. This can help maintain a comfortable ambient temperature in humid summers or crisp winters and reduce energy costs.
In addition to regulating temperature, vent covers help control humidity and moisture. Keeping humid summer air out of your crawl space and stopping heat from escaping during colder weather prevents condensation from forming due to conflicting air temperatures. This helps prevent wood rot and mold-related problems from forming and protects the health and value of your home.
Furthermore, vent covers are an effective way to deter pests and vermin from entering your crawl space. By closing off foundation vents with airtight vent covers, you can prevent insects and rodents from squeezing through poorly screened vent openings.
Why Open Crawl Space Vents Do More Harm Than Good
While the original thought behind venting crawl spaces was to keep them dry, more recent research from building scientists has explained that crawl spaces should be sealed, insulated, and outfitted with a vapor barrier to control moisture, improve comfort, and decrease energy use. Open crawl space vents can do more harm than good, particularly in humid climates.
Moist outside air coming in through the vents can condense on the cool surfaces inside the crawl space, contributing to mold, mildew, and rot. This can lead to musty odors and bouncy floors, common signs of a moisture problem in homes with open crawl space vents.
Using Crawl Space Vent Covers
To fortify your crawl space against crawl space problems, it is recommended to use crawl space vent covers that are installed over the outside of the vent opening. Covers with built-in weatherstripping ensure a tight seal and heavy-duty PVC materials like those used in CleanSpace crawl space vent covers won’t rot like DIY plywood covers.
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Signs Your Crawl Space Needs Vent Covers
A lack of vent covers or non-airtight variants can allow a number of problems to develop in your crawl space. If left unattended, these problems can spiral out of control, leading to property damage and poor air quality. Thankfully, there are signs of moisture in your crawl space that arise before the damage grows beyond repair.
Carefully inspect your home and crawl space for any of the symptoms below, or consult a moisture control expert at Groundworks for symptoms specific to your location.
- Mold and Mildew
When crawl space vents are left unsealed, they allow damp air to seep in and become trapped underneath the home. This creates a moist environment that is the perfect breeding ground for fungus. Mold and mildew, which are types of fungi, thrive in spaces with high moisture levels, such as waterlogged crawl spaces.
The presence of these organisms can reduce indoor air quality, as they release spores that can have negative health impacts on your family. These spores can cause respiratory issues, such as difficulty breathing and irritation of the mouth, eyes, nose, and throat. People with asthma or allergies may experience these symptoms more severely, to the point where they cannot comfortably live in the home.
If left untreated, mold growth will continue progressing and can spread from the crawl space to the rest of the home. Different mold species appear in various colors, but most appear as dark specks on walls, floors, and objects. Clusters of mold growth are often visible in corners and along the wall-floor joint in rooms.
- Unpleasant Smells
Trapped moisture can result in the formation of a damp smell. Although this odor may not initially appear problematic, some homeowners may overlook the warning signs. However, the stagnant moisture intensifies as time passes, creating a more pungent and offensive smell. When mold and mildew start to thrive on the trapped moisture, an additional layer of scents is emitted. These organisms produce a musty, unpleasant smell that worsens as the mold colony grows.
The stench of mold and mildew can seep into various items such as fabrics, wallpaper, and furniture, persisting even after attempts to clean them. Furthermore, mold odors can attract pests, which can generate their own unpleasant smells. Once these pests settle into areas such as crawl spaces and unsealed vents, they, too will create an unmistakable odor of mustiness and urine.
These smells are likely most concentrated in areas where pest colonies reside. Depending on the severity of the infestation, the pungent odors can permeate the entire house or be limited to specific rooms.
- High-Energy Usage
An unusually high energy bill during summer and winter peaks indicates that you are spending more energy regulating the home’s temperature. In summer, open crawl space vents allow warm air to seep under your home. As this warm air rises, it creates a dense cloud of humidity in your living space. Often, this applies more pressure on internal cooling systems as you attempt to combat the heat by leaving the devices to run longer. The same can be seen in colder weather as the chilly air inside the crawl space vents saps the warmth from the heated interior. This amounts to an expensive energy bill at the end of every month. Vent covers do a great deal for creating a more energy-efficient home.
- Pest Sightings
Discovering evidence of pests in your home is unsettling and a sign that your vents are attracting and housing pests. Finding droppings, signs of tunneling or nests, dead cockroaches and molted skins, and holes gnawed in walls or furniture are indicators that pests are nearby.
Aside from confirmed sightings of rodents, you may also hear them scurrying through the vent spaces at night. Vent covers are great tools for deterring pests as they lock them out of the vents entirely.
- Peeling Wallpaper Or Paint Bubbles
Moisture trapped in crawl spaces and vents will eventually cause wallpaper to peel or paint to bubble. Damage of this kind often means the damp has seeped into the drywall or baseboards. Dehumidifiers may be required to prevent further damage, and walls will need to be repapered or repainted. Add it all up, and this can be pretty costly. An excellent solution to prevent this situation from happening again, or at all, is to invest in quality vent covers.
FAQs About Vent Covers
Maintaining your crawl space vent covers is one thing you might worry about. If you add a crawl space vent cover, do you have to continue putting money, time, and energy into it? Here’s what you should know about crawl space vent cover maintenance.
- Possibility for Issues
If you have crawl space vent covers that don’t utilize high-quality materials, it’s true that you might have issues with airflow and water entry. Crawl space vent covers need to be as high quality as possible.
If your existing vent covers are made from a different material, they may need to be upgraded. A Groundworks expert can recommend the ideal solution for your home if you are concerned that your vent covers aren’t doing the job.
- High-Quality Materials
Groundworks uses high-quality vent covers that are made from durable plastic material. These covers are permanently installed and never need to be replaced.
When you use high-quality CrawlSeal Vent Covers, no repair work, cleaning, painting, or other maintenance work is required post-installation. It’s a long-term solution with proven results.
There are many reasons to get a crawl space vent cover for your crawl space vents. If you regularly have flooding issues around your home, you might be looking for a crawl space vent cover that can help you avoid water in the crawl space. This can be a very useful element of a crawl space vent cover if you know how to do it.
- An Airtight Seal
The most important thing to keep in mind is that crawl space vent covers need an airtight seal to keep water out. Groundworks’ chosen vent covers, CrawlSeal Vent Covers, provide a complete solution from start to finish.
Airtight seals keep the dry air inside and humid, moisture-laden air out. These seals also keep vents free from water during rain and minor flooding events.
- Maintain Your Crawl Space Vent Cover Quality
Remember, when you ensure that you only have high-quality crawl space vent covers, you’re much more likely to avoid issues with those same vent covers. The best way to avoid necessary replacements is to start out with something high quality.
The highest-quality crawl space vent covers will always be better. Maintain your home’s health and well-being. Refuse to settle for anything other than high-quality crawl space vent covers like CrawlSeal.
When you have open crawl space vents, you’re also typically going to have lower-quality air in your home as a whole and in your crawl space specifically. It’s one of the first things you’ll fix as part of a crawl space encapsulation strategy. Here’s how open crawl space vents can be unhealthy for your home.
- Humidity Issues
Open crawl space vents can be especially unhealthy in humid climates. Moisture in your home’s vent network can cause property damage, attract pests, and spark health problems.
None of these outcomes are ideal and can be costly to resolve, even before they grow out of control. Plus, because crawl space vent covers allow different temperatures of air to come into the crawl space, it can create humidity where there previously wasn’t any.
- Infestations
An open crawl space vent is one of the biggest reasons that you might end up with infestations. Mold and pest infestations in particular are known for impacting the health and well-being of residents.
Pests are carriers of disease, allergens, and bacteria, and mold can also increase your risk of allergies and asthma. Cutting off one of the main methods of entry, the crawl space vents, is a crucial element of avoiding these infestations.
Some people might wonder why they can’t just utilize crawl space vents that close. While most vents do have shutters or rudimentary covers that can be closed at will, these definitely aren’t the best solutions. Closing the crawl space vent shouldn’t be your first choice; installing a crawl space vent cover is a much better option.
- Not Airtight
One of the biggest problems with just closing a crawl space vent is the fact that it’s not going to be airtight. That essentially removes the reasons for closing the vent in the first place; air and water can both leak through a vent cover that’s not airtight.
An airtight vent cover will help you fix your crawl space. CrawlSeal vent covers are airtight and made from a durable plastic material that circumvents any future issues with rust or exposure damage.
- Long-Term Protection
It’s important that you don’t just think about the short term when it comes to your crawl space needs. Long-term protection should be one of the most important things that you consider; it’s less expensive and less time-consuming, especially in the long term.
When you talk to a Groundworks expert about your crawl space needs, they’ll help set you up with crawl space vent covers that will work for good.
Groundworks Vent Cover Solutions
Groundworks offers a solution to your crawl space moisture problems using CrawlSealTM Vent Covers. These covers are made of a 20-mil thick vapor barrier material that seamlessly fits over vent openings. With easy and hassle-free installation, our products are designed to provide a professional-quality solution that will last a long time.
If you’re wondering whether vent covers are the right solution for your home, reach out to a local expert. They will be able to assess your specific needs and provide the best possible advice. So don’t hesitate to contact a professional today and take the first step towards a dry and healthy crawl space.