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Did you know that dirty air from your crawl space can make your whole family sick? Many Virginia Beach homeowners don’t realize that up to 60% of the air in their home comes from the crawl space underneath. This means whatever is hiding under your house – mold, dirt, or bad smells – goes up into the rooms where your family lives and breathes every day. The good news is that proper crawl space cleaning and dehumidifier installation can fix these problems and protect your family’s health.
Why Virginia Beach Homes Have Special Problems
Living near the ocean in Virginia Beach creates extra challenges for your crawl space. Our area has an average relative humidity of 75% and receives about 46.5 inches of rainfall annually, according to official climate data. Virginia Beach experiences a humid subtropical climate with significant rainfall throughout the year. The salty air from the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean makes moisture problems even worse. Whether you live in Hilton Village, Town Center, the Oceanfront, or near Lynnhaven River, your crawl space faces these same moisture challenges that can hurt your family’s health.
How Bad Air Gets Into Your House
Dirty air from your crawl space enters your home in two main ways. First, air can leak through cracks in your heating and cooling system ducts. Second, air moves up through gaps in your floors. Unless your floor is completely sealed, dirty air will find its way into your house – there’s no stopping it.
Your house works like a chimney because of something called the “stack effect.” This natural process pulls air up from your crawl space into your living areas, then out through your attic. Hot air rises because it’s lighter than cold air. As warm air escapes from the top of your house, more air gets sucked up from below to replace it. This means your family is constantly breathing air that started in your crawl space.
What Causes Moisture Problems Under Your House
Most crawl spaces have dirt floors that stay damp. The dirt under your house is usually wetter than the dirt around your foundation. This causes water to move into your crawl space, where it turns into water vapor in the air. This moist air then settles on your air ducts, floor beams, and insulation.
Many older homes in Virginia Beach have vents in their crawl spaces. People used to think these vents would let moisture escape. However, these vents actually make the problem worse by letting more humid outside air come in. Building codes across North America are now changing because building science shows that vented crawl spaces end up being wetter, not drier.
Health Problems from Bad Crawl Space Air
The EPA tells us that Americans spend about 90% of their time indoors, where air pollution can be 2 to 5 times higher than outside air. When your crawl space has problems, the bad air affects your whole house. Here are the main health risks:
Breathing Problems: Mold and mildew grow in damp crawl spaces and release tiny spores into the air. When you breathe these spores, they can cause coughing, sneezing, and make asthma worse. About 10% of people in the United States are allergic to mold.
Long-term Health Issues: Research shows that long-term exposure to air pollutants can increase lung and heart disease. Children, elderly people, and those with existing health problems are especially at risk.
Other Dangerous Gases: Crawl spaces can trap carbon monoxide (a deadly gas) and radon (which causes lung cancer and is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the US). These gases have no smell or color, so you can’t tell they’re there without special testing.
Air Ducts in the Crawl Space
If the ducting for your HVAC system is running through the crawl space, it acts as a highway, carrying all the dust, moisture, rodent droppings, and chemicals from the crawl space directly into your living space and your air.
Ducts that are well-sealed shouldn’t be an issue, but the reality is that ducts in the crawl space are usually poorly installed and unsealed. Ducts carrying cold air through a humid crawl space can mean condensation problems. Condensation is the leading cause of brown-rot.
Supply ducts blow the air that you pay to heat and cool the rooms in your home. As this pressurized air passes the joint in the ducts, air leaks out. It is estimated that 2% of the air leaks out at each joint. This causes the living spaces to be depressurized and the crawl space to become more pressurized. This pushes the moldy air up faster than it would otherwise.
When Do You Need Duct Cleaning in Your Crawl Space?
Sometimes cleaning your air ducts isn’t enough to fix the problem. When your crawl space has serious contamination from floods, pests, or mold, you might need special sanitizing treatments. This means using safe chemicals to kill germs and bacteria that regular cleaning can’t remove.
Our trained technicians only recommend duct sanitizing when it’s really needed for your family’s health. This usually happens after flooding in Virginia Beach during hurricane season, when rodents have gotten into your ductwork, or when there’s heavy mold growth from our humid coastal climate. We never use chemicals unless your ducts need this extra protection.
When sanitizing is necessary, we follow strict safety rules. We only use chemicals approved by the EPA and apply them exactly as directed. These treatments only go on metal ducts and other hard surfaces – never on flexible ducts or insulation that could absorb the chemicals. We make sure your home has proper air flow during treatment and will tell you if you need to leave your house while we work.
Before any chemical treatment, we’ll explain exactly what contamination we found and why sanitizing will help protect your family’s health. This extra step ensures your crawl space air is truly safe to breathe.
Why Old-Style Crawl Space Vents Don’t Work
For many years, people thought crawl spaces needed vents to let moisture escape. But we now know this idea was wrong. These vents actually let more humid air come in from outside, making moisture problems worse instead of better. That’s why modern experts recommend sealing crawl spaces completely.
Your house naturally pulls air up from the crawl space into your living room. This happens because warm air rises and escapes through your attic, creating suction that draws air up from below. Up to 50% of the air you breathe in your home started in your crawl space. This is very different from your attic, which has proper insulation and ventilation to keep bad air from moving into your house.
Open crawl space vents make your heating and cooling system work much harder. In Virginia Beach’s hot summers and cool winters, outside air flows through these vents and into your home. Your air conditioner or heater has to work overtime to make this incoming air comfortable. This can increase your energy bills significantly.
How Encapsulation Saves Money and Improves Health
The best solution is crawl space encapsulation. This means we seal your entire crawl space with thick plastic covers on the floors and walls. We also close all the foundation vents permanently. Professional encapsulation in Virginia Beach typically costs between $5,000 and $15,000, but homeowners often save 15-25% on their energy bills afterward.
Encapsulation creates a clean, dry space under your house. We install dehumidifiers to control moisture and sometimes add sump pumps to remove any water that gets in. This keeps mold, pests, and bad smells away while making your home more comfortable. Most encapsulation systems in Virginia Beach last 15-20 years when installed properly, making them a smart long-term investment for your family’s health and your home’s value.
Why Dehumidifiers Are Important
Even with encapsulation, Virginia Beach’s coastal climate often requires dehumidifiers to control moisture. Research shows that keeping humidity at 50% or below reduces bacteria, viruses, fungi, and allergens. This greatly lowers your family’s chances of getting respiratory infections.
Dehumidifiers also help prevent pest problems. Termites and other moisture-loving bugs can’t survive in properly controlled environments. For homes near the water or in flood-prone areas, combining dehumidifiers with sump pumps provides the best protection.
What You Can Do Now
Don’t wait for problems to get worse. If you smell musty odors, see mold, or have family members with breathing problems that seem worse at home, your crawl space might be the cause. Virginia Beach’s location between the ocean and the bay means moisture problems develop faster here than in other areas.
Contact a licensed professional for a free inspection. Look for companies with experience in coastal Virginia that understand our unique climate challenges. Companies should offer warranties on their work and be certified for mold removal.
Protecting Your Family’s Health
The air you breathe at home should be clean and safe. Your crawl space plays a bigger role in your family’s health than most people realize. By addressing moisture at its source through professional cleaning and encapsulation, you can avoid costly health problems and home repairs.
Remember, in Virginia Beach’s humid climate, crawl space maintenance isn’t optional – it’s essential for protecting your home and your family’s health. The sooner you take action, the better you can protect your investment and keep your family breathing clean, healthy air.
Pest Control Reviews from Our Current Customers
“Universal Pest & Termite installed a complete crawl space micro-encapsulation system under our home. It immediately made a difference with the musty smells we were getting in our bedroom and kitchen. We checked out local pest control reviews and found Universal Pest.”
-Maddie K Chesapeake (Virginia)
“We contacted several termite companies in Virginia Beach after discovering active termites in our home. Josh with Universal Pest & Termite was by far the best inspector we met with. In addition, Universal offered the best termite program for our budget.”
-Merrideth G. Virginia Beach (Virginia)
“After trying other moisture control companies for our fungi and moisture problem, we contacted Universal Pest & Termite. They made sure all of our questions were answered and eliminated our moisture problem, as well as repairing the existing moisture damage.”
-David C. Virginia Beach (Virginia)
About Universal Pest & Termite
We specialize in crawl space moisture control, encapsulation, and cleaning services throughout Virginia Beach, including Hilton Village, Town Center, Sandbridge, Great Neck, and all areas near the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean. Our experienced technicians understand the unique challenges of coastal Virginia’s climate and provide lasting solutions with our no-hassle guarantee. Contact us today for a free inspection at (757) 502-0200.
