Humidity and moisture can be a significant source of damage to your home’s crawl space or basement. Many homeowners install a dehumidifier in their crawl space to avoid wood rot, mold, warped floors, and other foundation headaches.
How essential is it to have a dehumidifier for these crucial areas under your home?
Continue reading to learn why KC Pier considers this so worthwhile.
Yes, Everyone Should Have a Crawl Space Dehumidifier
We encourage everyone who owns a home with a basement or crawl space to have a dehumidifier. Even where it may not seem totally necessary, you’ll still want one during the rainy months, where it’s harder to keep things dry and ensure air quality. Even if you tend to overuse them, it’s not a huge energy problem, especially considering all the problems you can avoid.
There are many brands and sizes for dehumidifiers, which gives you plenty of flexibility to find the right fit for your property. Considering how folks would prefer not to crawl down into that area very often, we recommend purchasing something self-sufficient. Thankfully, there are several that can self-monitor, drain themselves, and come with adjustable digital settings to help you keep your home mold free.
This is vital if you live with anybody with a compromised immune system (children or the elderly), and cannot take chances with low air quality brought on by excessive humidity. The more expensive ones can manage the water and humidity so precisely that you can set them up and forget about them. It’s a terrific investment in convenience, guaranteed high performance, and low maintenance.
Does Everyone Need an Expensive Appliance?
If your home doesn’t experience as much humidity trouble, you may be better off with a simpler dehumidifier, which you can still set and allow to run self-sufficiently. You will, however, have to empty a bucket or make adjustments now and then. Either way, none of this equipment requires a lot of upkeep.
So, we’re big fans of dehumidifiers and install them all the time with service work. KC Pier actually has a special monitoring system, Shipshape, where we can track water, humidity, and the device’s utility usage. If you reach a certain threshold on any of those, the monitoring system will alert you via email or text message that the appliance may require maintenance or replacement. That’s when you can call us to have us inspect it.
Other Important Elements of Crawl Space Repair & Upkeep
What are some other things to know about crawl space repair?
The big takeaway for this area of the home is the need to minimize hydrostatic pressure. This is the intrusive water that wreaks havoc on your home materials, leaving you with horrible odors, wood damage, mold, and even pest infestation. Fortunately, there are ways to minimize and prevent major problems even if you’ve already found signs of damage.
Along with the dehumidifiers and sumps we install, we can implement a more extensive water elimination program known as encapsulation. We do this sometimes to protect finished basements, where we’ll install a waterproof membrane and include multiple dehumidifiers to get the area as dry as possible. This is well worth it if you’re already having trouble with wall cracks, leaks, HVAC performance, wood rot, uneven floors, and poor air quality.
KC Pier: Kansas City’s Top Contractor for Basement Waterproofing
Everything we’ve mentioned falls within the framework of waterproofing your basement and other parts of your home. That’s one of our most popular services to eliminate or divert water from entering your home. KC Pier is also the area’s foremost authority on foundation repair techniques like helical pier installation, crack repair, and helping homeowners prepare their homes to go up for sale.
That’s why you’ll notice our nearly perfect rating on Google Reviews, plenty of positive testimonials from previous clients, and a stellar reputation with the Better Business Bureau (BBB). Whether you live in KC, Olathe, Overland Park, or any other nearby community, we’re at your service for foundation repair and waterproofing.
Contact us today to learn more about maintaining your crawl space or whenever you need reliable foundation repair service in Kansas City.
