Crawl Space Encapsulation in Ashland City, TN

Then there is the age of the place. Ashland City was created in 1856 as the seat of the new county and incorporated in 1859. Samuel Watson's gristmill and powder mill on Sycamore Creek ran from 1835 until 1904, and at its height it was one of the largest powder mills in the South. A town with that much history has building stock in layers. Older homes near the river and the creek bottoms sit on masonry piers. Mid-century houses have shallow crawl spaces behind block walls. Newer homes are up on higher ground, away from the bottoms.

Each layer fails in its own way. The pier houses have bare earth, open vents and floor framing that was never sealed from below. The mid-century houses usually have fibreglass batts hanging off the joists, because the paper facing soaked through years ago and let go. The newer homes are built to a better standard, but a thin ground sheet with open vents is not much better than nothing when the ground itself is wet.

East of the Harpeth the county rises into hills, and part of that ground is set aside as the Cheatham State Wildlife Management Area. Houses on sloped, wooded ground get crawl spaces with uneven clearance. Damp air pools at the low end, and the timber there shows it first.

The liner. A heavy reinforced sheet goes across the floor and up the foundation walls. Every seam is overlapped and taped, every pier is wrapped, and the edges are fastened and sealed to the wall. This is the vapour barrier that separates the house from the wet ground under it.

The sealing. The old foundation vents get closed and sealed, because in Cheatham County summers they let in more moisture than they release. The rim and band area is sealed, and gaps around pipes and wires are filled. The aim is a crawl space that no longer breathes outside air.

The drainage. If water is entering the space, the liner alone will not fix it. Water has to be intercepted and moved out first, with a drain and a sump pump where the grade demands it. We will tell you plainly if drainage has to come before anything else.

The conditioning. Once the space is sealed and dry, a dehumidifier holds the humidity down through the summer. That is what keeps the timber dry year after year rather than for one season.

• Homes in the river bottoms. Anywhere near the Cumberland or Sycamore Creek, the ground moisture is constant and the crawl space is the first place it shows.
• Older pier houses near the old town core. Open ground and open vents from another century. The floor framing has been damp for decades.
• Mid-century houses with fallen fibreglass. If the batts are on the ground, the insulation you paid for is doing nothing and the floor is still cold.
• Sloped lots toward the wooded hills. Uneven clearance, wet at the low end, unreachable at the high end. A liner laid flat is the only thing that covers both.
• A musty smell in the first floor rooms. That smell is crawl space air. Seal the ground and dry the space, and the smell loses its source.

The materials are widely available. What you are paying for is a crew that wraps every pier, tapes every seam, seals every vent and sizes the equipment correctly. That is the difference between a crawl space that stays dry and one that only looked dry on the day it was photographed.

See our full crawl space encapsulation service, the spray foam insulation we pair it with, or the complete service area.