Crawl Space Encapsulation in Southern Pines, NC

We're local and know our market: Sand plays a trick here. The top three inches under a Sandhills home can be bone dry while the ground seven or eight inches down is soaking wet. The porous top layer sheds its moisture upward, and the crawl space collects it. Homeowners tell us the space has been dry for the fifteen years they have lived there. Above their heads, the framing carries fungal growth fed by all that quiet evaporation.

The climate stays hot, humid, and sticky about nine months of the year. No surprise, then, that roughly 85% of the work we do is moisture related. The local habit of setting even million-dollar new builds on open vented crawl spaces keeps it that way. We have watched brand-new houses show fungal growth within six months.

About 85 percent of the work that we perform is moisture related, and that comes down to our climate zone, our soil, and the fact that we are still building on traditional foundations here. The sandy soil in the Sandhills fools people. The top layer is very porous, so it dries out fast and looks clean, while 7 or 8 inches down you are still sitting on water. All that water underneath keeps evaporating up into the crawl space, and folks who tell us their crawl space has been dry for 15 years often have fungal growth everywhere because there is no vapor barrier holding that evaporation back.

The other half of it is who lives here. Around 60 percent of our population is retirement age or above, and a lot of these are new builds with people retiring down here from up north, California, or Florida. If they came from up north they are used to basements, if they came from Florida they have never seen a crawl space in their life, and if they came from California they have no clue about our weather. In a climate like ours you need to start with a sealed foundation and a sealed crawl space, because a brand new house here can have fungal growth within six months from the humidity and the soil. Our wet stretch really kicks up in August and September with the higher rainfall and hurricane season.

Dan Thomas, our market leader, has been part of this community since 1984 and spent 15 years in construction products before running Crawlspace Medic of the Sandhills. Our installers are the most experienced group in North Carolina: production manager Yvanni, and three crew leads, Osmond, Orlando, and Jonathan. At the North Carolina jamboree they were recognized as the only three crew leads in the state with that kind of tenure.

Tenure shows up as quality. Callbacks are almost unheard of here, essentially none in about four years, because our crews do exactly what the proposal says and stand behind it. We have even gone back and repaired another company's local job. In a market this tight-knit, Dan's standard is simple: When he runs into customers at the grocery store, he wants a hug, not a can of corn thrown at him.

Our most popular package is what Dan calls a hybrid seal: a new 16-mil ground vapor barrier, vents sealed, a full clean-out, insulation patched and re-pinned where needed, and a dehumidifier with a condensate pump. On cost, the market splits into bands: $1,000 to $2,000 for a loose-plastic crew, $15,000 to $30,000 on average from national foundation chains, and $5,000 to $10,000 for a typical Crawlspace Medic job. The free inspection sets the scope, and we only sell what the house needs.

Sandhills jobs come back to the same three items most: vapor barrier, fungal treatment, and sump pumps.

Dan wishes every homeowner knew two things. First, where their crawl space is. Second, when someone last took true wood moisture content readings under there, rather than eyeballing the soil or quoting a humidity number. Our free inspection measures the wood itself: 12 to 16% moisture content is where framing belongs, and beyond 20% decay is actively working. Many of our neighbors retired here from basement country up north, from Florida, or from California. Education is part of the estimate.