Protect Your Home with a Vapor Barrier
All buildings, which have an enclosed crawl space underneath and dirt floors, should have a vapor barrier. The vapor barrier should be a 6 mil polyethylene material black in color which lays flat on the ground. The purpose of this is to prevent moisture from the ground from rising up and absorbing into the wooden supports and sub-flooring in the crawl space.
A house without, or with an inadequate, vapor barrier (above picture) is vulnerable to damaging including fungus, rot, mold, and a variety of wood destroying insects.
To correct this, our technicians have installed a 6 mil polyethylene barrier. It is installed to lay flat on the ground and navigates around support post piers, etc. Our technicians carefully lay this out as to not have it carelessly rest against any of the wooden support posts or other materials that would trap moisture. The area is covered 100% by our newly installed vapor barrier. This house is now clean and dry. It has no penetrating moisture or dirt odors.
What is a vapor barrier ? Is it really helpful to protect our houses ? Maybe if I could really use this for my house and I can conclude that it is really helpful.
Simply put, a vapor barrier slows or prevents the evaporation of ground moisture into the crawl space air.
Thank you for explaining that a vapor barrier is there to prevent moisture from rising up and being absorbed into the wooden supports. We were getting a home inspected that we want to buy and were told that we’ll need to get the vapor barrier replaced for the crawl space. We weren’t sure why we would need one, but it seems like it could prevent structural damage so we’ll get it done soon.