michael church here and i just wanted to sharewith you a little bit about how critters can get inside the crawl space and i am goingto show you couple different points of entry that you might want to address. so stay tunedfor this next video we hope you like it. okay i am going to take just a moment to talkto you about this vent and you can maybe see the fan behind me. a lot of times people willventilate their crawl space which is good
how to get rid of rat snakes in your yard, idea to keep soil, gases, radon, things likethat moving out of the house. but, one of the things that is a problem with this crawlspace vent, is that there’s areas for rodents, snakes, things like that to go around. andi don’t know if you can see it, but the fan thats back there, you may be able to hearrunning. they didn’t seal around the fan,
so it’s not really been blowing a wholelot of air, because what’s happening, is as air comes out of the fan, it’s causinga back-draft and it’s not really a lot of hair out of the crawl space. so this is one of the things you want to makesure of, if you do install a fan in the vent of a crawl space, to be sure to make it whereno critters can get in. obviously. and then seal around the fan on the inside of the crawlspace and that will actually make the fan work better, so i hope that’s a good tipfor you. okay, here i am going show you something real quick. there is a lot of critters gettinginto this crawl space and probably what’s going on is they’re entering right here.this, they did a pretty good job of sealing
the sheet metal, although you can see thatthe caulk has probably gotten away from the edge and should be re-caulked. it’s abouttime to re-caulk it. but 2 places critters can get underneath this heating and air unitis here. a good sized possum could actually make its way underneath inside there, andthen once they’re in this sheet metal they got free access right into the crawl space.so you may want to make sure if you can’t seal this all this properly that you sealit on the inside of the crawl space, so that you don’t get a lot of critters making theirway into your crawlspace and tearing your insulation down and all that. the other thing is right underneath here,you see how you got this heating and air unit
sitting on little skids, and i can put myhand right underneath there. okay, so smaller critters like mice, snakes, and things likethat can make their way into the crawlspace there as well. so, the best thing to do especiallyif you have an older house already has a unit installed, is to seal the inside of the crawlspace and help keep those critters out. now remember they can chew through some things,but if they come up against something that’s sealed properly they may lose interest inmove on to somewhere else. here’s an inside view of that fan, you can see they just attachedit to the joist with two screws, and air is actually coming back in. it’s creating aback flow because the air is able to make its way back into the crawlspace, so it’snot really doing a whole lot of good because
of how they installed it. so, there is a certainway you should install fans. the other thing i want to look at is how dirty the fan isyou see all the dirt all over it. that needs to be vacuumed out or cleaned out. so, youjust wanna install these fans properly, so that they maximize their use of ventilatingout the crawl space. *testimonial*hey michael church here with crawlspaceninja.com. we just finished cherise’s crawl space andshe’s in the process of selling her house and cherise tell me what happened with yourcrawl space when you was trying to sell your house? (cherise) there are some moisture inthere and humidity was very high, so you came in and fixed the whole problem! (michael)cool! so i guess the crawl space didn’t
hinder the sell the house or anything right?(cherise) i would not have gone through if the crawl space wasn’t fixed. (michael)well, so you gotta make sure you get it done
right? (cherise) yes you have to get doneright, and you have to get someone like you! (michael) well thank you very much! (cherise)i am very happy, looks great down there! (michael) well thank you again for using us and i reallyappreciate you doing this video testimonial. thanks again! (cherise) you’re welcome!
