Musty smell, cold floors or damp dirt under the house? We find where the water's coming from, then cover the ground the right way.
A crawl space vapor barrier in Merced is a plastic ground cover laid across the dirt under your house. It helps keep ground moisture and soil gases from working their way up into your floors and the rooms above.
Most people call us about a musty smell, cold floors or dirt that looks damp when they open the access hatch. The question I try to answer for you is whether a cover alone fits your crawl space, whether there's water to deal with first, or whether it makes sense to close the crawl space off entirely.
The price mostly comes down to how big the crawl space is, how easy it is to move around in, how much has to be cleared out, and whether you want a ground cover alone or a closed-off crawl space, which is a bigger job. The schedule turns mostly on whether there's water to deal with outside first, and the written estimate I leave you lays out what I found, what I'd do and in what order.
I started this business in 2017, and every crawl space job starts the same way, with me under the house before anyone talks price.
After you call or send a request, I come to your house, walk the yard along the foundation and go down into the crawl space with a flashlight. I take photos so you can see the dirt, the framing and any standing water for yourself.
The estimate lists the problems I saw, like wet spots, pest damage or water coming in from the yard, before it gets to the price. If a cover alone won't fix what's going on, it says so plainly.
We're licensed and insured. In California, contractors are licensed by the Contractors State License Board. Our own crew does the work in the order it needs to go, and I check it over before we call it finished. Satisfaction guaranteed on every job.
I look at where the water's coming from, whether that's the grading, the drains or the sprinklers, before we lay a ground cover, because plastic alone won't fix a drainage problem. If a cover is all you need, our crew clears the space and lays it. Closing a crawl space off is a larger job with its own order, because federal building guidance says drainage and moisture problems have to be handled before the walls are sealed and insulated, so it stays dry once it's enclosed. After that, a Department of Energy checklist calls for a combustion safety test if a water heater or furnace that vents on its own draft sits down there, to make sure its exhaust isn't spilling back out.
If you want moisture handled in other parts of the house too, our vapor barrier installation work covers that beyond the crawl space. Crawl space work also often goes hand in hand with attic air sealing, closing the gaps around lights, pipes and the attic hatch, because a house that pulls damp air in at the bottom usually lets it out at the top.
Once the water question is settled, the cover goes in step by step, and each step is there for a reason.
We pull out stored boxes, old wood scraps and other debris, because the cover can't reach the whole floor with things sitting on it. Anything of yours that's down there comes out and goes where you tell us.
Department of Energy installer guidance calls for covering all the ground, or as close as you reasonably can get, and running the plastic up the walls, piers and footings, the concrete bases the house sits on. The point is to leave as little bare dirt as possible for moisture to come up through.
The same guidance says the cover should leave the crawl space's existing drainage working, so water that already finds its way out still can. It's a fair question to ask any contractor, us included.
We haul out the scraps and offcuts and leave the access and the yard the way we found them. Insulation and plastic jobs make a mess if you let them, so cleanup is part of the job, not an extra.
Send a few details about your crawl space and we'll get back to you within one business day to set up a visit. I'll come out, look underneath and around the outside, and leave you a free on-site estimate in writing, with no obligation to go ahead. You can also call (209) 308-1021.
(209) 308-1021Installing a crawl space vapor barrier usually costs about $1,200 to $4,000 per job across the US, and that's a national range for the work, not our price. Where your house lands depends on the size of the crawl space and what has to happen before the cover goes down, and the written estimate puts your number on paper.
Yes, federal building guidance says the plastic ground cover should go in whether your crawl space has vents to the outside or is closed off. So if you've got the usual vented crawl space, a cover still belongs in the plan, and closing it off is a separate choice you can make later or not at all.
Usually not by itself, because federal building guidance says the main source of moisture in a vented crawl space is bulk water from poor yard grading, missing drains around the foundation or heavy watering. A cover laid over that leaves the cause in place, and moisture left alone can feed mold and rot in the floor joists and rim joists, the wood framing that holds up your floor.
On a home improvement job, a contractor can't ask for or take a down payment of more than $1,000 or 10 percent of the contract price, whichever is less, under rules from the state licensing board. Any payments after that are listed in the contract and tied to work already done or materials already delivered to your home.
One California cost publisher points to the heavy clay soils around Merced and the nearby Valley counties, clay that swells when it's wet, as a reason crawl spaces here run damp even with the hot, dry air. On jobs here we see plenty of older houses with lawns and sprinklers right up against the foundation, which is why I look at the yard as closely as the crawl space.
We're based in Merced and work in many cities around it, north toward Modesto and south toward Madera, including Atwater, Turlock and Chowchilla. The soil and the houses are a lot alike from one to the next, so we do the same careful crawl space work in each of them.
Call (209) 308-1021 or use the form, and tell us whether your crawl space has vents and whether a water heater or furnace sits down there, since that changes what I check first.
If you're not sure what's going on under your floor, call or send a note and we'll talk it through.
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