Structural Damage

There is another industry that has vented dirt crawl spaces to thank for its existence - structural repairs to replace floor joists, girders, and sill plates - basically the entire floor framing system under your house. These repairs aren't cheap. In fact, they can be very expensive. You can imagine a carpenter figuring out how he's going to crawl under your home and get new 16 foot long 2" x 10"s in place, with all the duct work, wiring, plumbing, and bridging (cross bracing) that are attached to the old rotted joists, all while operating on his back in a low crawl space. It's not easy on him, and it's not going to be easy on your bank account. Most of the time, these structural repairs are done without ever fixing the problem! So it's only a matter of time before the new framing rots out, and it has to be done again. What is the design life of a house? In other words, how long do you want your house to last without needing major repairs? If the answer is longer than 10 or 15 or 25 years, then you better fix your dirt crawl space. When you look at the cost of higher energy bills, and especially when you add that year's pro rata share of rot repairs when they eventually will have to be done, you can easily see that it is more expensive to live with a dirt crawl space than to fix it right now. By not fixing your dirt crawl space, over the life of the house, you are paying many times more than it costs to fix now.