Covering crawlspace vents (in an attractive way...)

trailhugger said:
Our foundation was painted, so the brick infill disappeared, not to mention foundation plantings hid most of them. We did it ourselves and it's totally easy, YouTube and patience are your friends.

If you are trying to match unpainted brick, your best bet is to call a rep. Oldcastle/Adams probably has someone local to you, but if nothing else you could send a photo to my buddy David McQueen (and tell him I said hello).

David.mcqueen@oldcastleapg.com
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Thinking about it, maybe paint is the way to go, but the vents may just be a good excuse to paint it anyway. I need to do an image search on that. I wish the brick was a (natural) gray shade instead of a red shade, but there's nothing I can do about that. Painting can't really change it into the look that I really want, it can only give a different look.

I found the Oldcastle distr page, and it's slim pickings in Charlotte but Statesville Brick might be a good choice from the list of Oldcastle distributors.
 
Fabrik8 said:
I'm no building expert, but if you're drawing air into the crawlspace from the house, and it's getting drawn through the doors and windows, you're just pulling conditioned air out through the crawlspace with negative pressure and replacing it with exterior air. So you're just making a leaky first floor of your house by adding extra negative pressure. Good for fresh air, bad for energy. I'm sure it's fine, I just don't know if I'd choose that solution.

I guess ultimately any method of introducing conditioned air into the crawlspace is going to do that though, unless the makeup air comes partially from the crawlspace through leakage paths. Hmm. Nevermind.
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I'm positive we are on different ideas of volume by at least 10x.

You are correct if the volume were great, but it's not.

It's small compared to kitchen hoods, dryer, bath fans etc. The air leaks around wires, pipes, and ductwork that already protrude through the floor to the crawlspace.


109 pint dehumidifier is huge for a crawlspace, huge amp load, large size, and large noise.

With a unit that size, I'm guessing you should check behind them for the air sealing of the walls.

It's dumb to install the dehu before installing a vapor barrier.

1) that is a ton of wasted energy attempting to dry the top of the soil

2) you are drying a surface that will soon be covered with a vapor barrier, that will become moisture laden, once covered.

3) dry dirt on the surface becomes dust that will cover everything in the crawlspace when workers install the vapor barrier. If your crawlspace is then positively pressurized this dust will infiltrate your first floor duct work and have unit, and the first floor of the house.

This dust is perfect for settling in unseen and uncleaned areas and growing more mold.

All of that is bad for your indoor air quality. Speaking of your IAQ, has anyone looked at your A/c coil and fan assembly for mold?

That's another area that can steal energy and contribute to poor IAQ.

4) what humidty control is on that unit, and what warranty does that dehu have?

Sounds to me, they wanted to get to work quick to seal the deal, and come back to finish at their convenience.

It's pointless to run the dehu without air sealing the walls.

That's like running your ac with all the windows open.

If you can see light entering the crawlspace walls anywhere, they are not sealed.
 
Yeah, today was just drain trench and clean out day. I think I am probably grossly overestimating the amount of airflow. I agree that it doesn't make sense to run the dehu without everything sealed up. At least it's quiet, I can't even hear it run from inside the house..

We're getting the ducts checked out and probably cleaned after the encapsulation is complete, because there's not much point in doing it before then after this long. The gas pack is 15 years old, so that probably won't last much longer with an unknown maintenance history. Yay houses! It's going to be so much nicer to do shit under there after the liner is installed though.
 
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If walls are sealed well and with a good ground vapor barrier a dehumidifier can be sized at 20 pints per thousand square feet. If you can find brick that match I would stand them up (soldier course) instead of try to match them laying them down (running bond). I also like a negative pressure in crawl space. It does require sealing the walls very well with gaskets on access doors that fit well. The pressure should be minimum. A 50 cfm exhaust fan is adequate for most crawlspaces
 
When discussing possible problems with brick matching and finding a local place with a good selection, the wife (without the topic being mentioned) says "lets just paint the brick, I don't like that brick anyway and it doesn't match the house".

So I now think Cydney has telepathic abilities, at least related to things like brick painting. I don't even think I need to @trailhugger because I'm sure she already knows... Spooky. :D
 
Got a strap of pretty closely matching brick from Pine Hall Brick and some mortar. Dry fit all of the brick and cleaned out the openings on Saturday, and laid the brick today. Not a pro job by any means, but a pretty solid 10-footer. Sure looks better than those awful plastic vents.

Haven't seen if the mortar color matches yet, but it should be dry in the next day or so. Did 9 of the 15 vents, and the other 6 are under low-height decks so the crawlspace people are putting covers on them.

Result.


Someone is building a house a few doors down, and I was laughing my ass off when they laid the foundation block....

...with crawlspace vents. Who builds a vented crawlspace in 2016?
 
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shawn said:
It's not that big of a deal. You're going to want a dehumidifier down there, anyway. Just buy a cheap one and pipe the condensate to the exterior. Then provide a bit of air from the HVAC system to positively pressurize the space.
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I put a damper on the intake side of my ac unit (sits in the crawl space) and added a damper on the duct that runs the farthest from the unit. Doing this circulates the air in the crawl space and dehumidifies it when the ac is running. It's done pretty well like this
 
RobMcBee said:
I put a damper on the intake side of my ac unit (sits in the crawl space) and added a damper on the duct that runs the farthest from the unit. Doing this circulates the air in the crawl space and dehumidifies it when the ac is running. It's done pretty well like this
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I never understood why you'd put a dehumidifier in the crawl space until somebody pointed out that RH levels spike in the spring and the fall when the HVAC system spends most of its time not doing much of anything.

You could always put a humidistat down there and monitor it just to be safe.
 
shawn said:
I never understood why you'd put a dehumidifier in the crawl space until somebody pointed out that RH levels spike in the spring and the fall when the HVAC system spends most of its time not doing much of anything.

You could always put a humidistat down there and monitor it just to be safe.
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I kinda did that, I bought an indoor outdoor thermometer that shows humidity. The outdoor monitor is in my crawl and shows me the temp and humidity down there. I know it's not completely accurate but if it spikes I can turn on the ac or just use the circulation mode on my unit. Luckily I've not had to do that a whole lot. It stays pretty level down there, never getting above 45-55% on even the swampy days. The company I used that did my crawl said that because it was such a small space and I have a really good ac unit that we may not need a dehumidifier if we put in the dampers. So far it has worked well.


Sorry for the hijack, glad to see you found a way to fill in your vent holes.
 
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