Cellar/Crawlspace question from a newbie

[kingfarm]

Hello, everyone!

After lurking here for several months I thought it was about time to join in the fun (if for no other reason than to thank you all for the awesome information that can be found here!)

A little history of our place: my hubby and I have lived in our new old home for almost a year and there's no doubt in our minds that this is where we are meant to be. It's a lovely old farmhouse, built sometime around 1874 as far as we've been able to guesstimate (we've been fortunate enough to have inherited, along with the house, Jack - one of the former occupants; he lives a few miles away, is 86, and grew up here as his grandparents and then parents owned the place...he loves to visit and his memory is uncanny. He is a treasure!)

The original owner lived here for 30 years, then the King family owned it for 90. When the family farm was broken up and the house sold, the last previous owner did a lot of restoration and flipped it - to us! It has been well loved and well kept, and every day I'm amazed at our luck in stumbling into this place.

My first (of many!) question deals with the cellar/crawlspace. The cellar is small, only under the kitchen, and is built of lovely, huge old stones. The crawlspace under the rest of the house has an arched brick entry that is raised about 4 feet off the cellar floor. It has a dirt floor and the foundation walls were insulated by the PO. There is heavy black plastic laid on the dirt but not fastened down. There is no evidence that this area has ever been wet. The cellar, however is a different story!

During the heavy spring rains, the cellar flooded twice to a depth of 18 inches before we discovered the sump wasn't functioning. We brought in two additional pumps and have since repaired the sump, narrowly averting disaster (HVAC, water heater, and water softener are all down there). We have since discovered that there are many wet weather springs around, and we're pretty sure this is what's flooding the cellar. The water comes in in multiple places between the stones in the wall, about 6" off the floor. This is not new, Jack tells us it has always done this and before the sump was installed they would bail it out with buckets.There is no sign of damage, rot or even mold. My concern is that there is often a damp, musty smell in one spot in the house, over the crawlspace. In the foyer, the wood flooring has separated a bit. Our pre-purchase inspector (who specialized in historic homes) said this was not structural and not a huge concern. But this small space goes clear through to the crawlspace and that is where I notice the smell.

We are very confused by the debate over whether or not to ventilate. Right now the whole cellar/crawlspace is ventilated. Since the cellar itself is wet at times (don't know any way to keep the springs from seeping in) I can't see a way to seal any of it. But would it be possible to cover the opening to the crawlspace and seal the crawlspace while ventilating the cellar? I've also read here recently that some old farm homes were actually intentionally built to have wet cellars to use as a type of spring house; could this be possible? Although the property originally had an ice house, so I don't know how likely this is.

Sorry to be so long winded my very first post!

[Raine]

Welcome...I have a similar crawl/cellar . We keep the windows ( vents ? in your case ) closed . We dehumidify when needed. With heavy rains the floor gets wet, maybe a half inch. I have just installed an exhaust fan on a timer 30 minute on/off intervals for about 3 hrs in the morning and in the evening. My thought is that it helps keep the air dryer and the basement smell less and radon exhaust . I dont know if we have radon. I think this is working but too soon to tell. Its just a cheap $6 fan attached to ducting out the window with screen over opening . I will also attach wire mesh so no critters with teeth can get in.

[SkipW]

Welcome!

My feeling is that a dehumidifier is the best way to keep a cellar or crawlspace from feeling wet, being wet and smelling wet. Now, obviously, if you have water pouring in, a dehumidifier will not take the place of a pump, but if there is residual moisture after the pump does it's job, then a dehumidifier will keep the area dry(er).

I have a 10x12 approx stand up cellar with the heat, water, etc items as you do. It is accessed by bulkhead. The rest of the house is over a dirt crawlspace that gets moist/wet in good rains. The floor used to get at least 2" of water in decent rains and the crawlspace flooded behind the half wall separating the cellar/crawlspce. We have done perimiter drains and routed that which we cannot catch directly to a drain to daylight. It has really helped.

The first thing to do (although tough if you're built over a spring!) is to make sure you have adequate drainage around the house to take water away from the foundation, and if you can't, take the water directly to the floor drains. If you can mitigate the water intrusion to the best amount, you have solved half the problem.

Next step is to get a dehumidifier (bigger than you think tou need) and have it run either always, or on a timer. Ours has a built in timer that we set to two hours on/two hours off. We do not have water in the cellar or smells of mildew/moisture. If after a hard rain there is some seepage, it is gone the next day due to the dehumidifier.

As mentioned in another thread, I'm not a fan of opening windows/ventilation of a crawl space. This is due to the fact that (generally) the outside air is warmer than the cellar/crawlspace walls, floor, etc and it just condenses everywhere, causing more moisture, rust, rot, mildew etc. A dehumidifier does much better IMHO.

[kingfarm]

Thanks for the replies - now I wish we hadn't gotten rid of our dehumidifier before we moved!

I'm surprised (and a little concerned) that the musty smell is on the opposite side of the house from the cellar. In the kitchen, which is the only room over the cellar, there is no smell. The cellar has been bone dry for months, as we are in a dry spell, but I do still notice the wet smell occasionally from that spot in the hallway. It has been very hot and humid here for the past month or so.

What are your thoughts on putting some sort of vapor barrier/insulation between the floor joists over that section of the crawlspace - would that cut down on the odor? It really is the only place in the house where I've smelled it, and I wonder if that is because of the slight opening between the floorboards. And fixing that is on the honey-do list, by the way!

[SkipW]

Can you crawl or somehow get to the 'musty smell' area? I don't want to sound indelicate, but maybe there is 'something smelly' in there like an animal or some such. Or maybe you will find there is an area where water puddles or some other issue that would be easily corrected to get rid of the smell.

[kingfarm]

Hubby can (I have not personally ventured into this scary space yet - it's the only place on the property that I've avoided and I'm ashamed to admit to all you wonderful DIYers here that it spooks me. I do, however, stand at the opening and cheer him on. Does that count?

It isn't a dead smell. I used to work in a very old building where rodents and birds would sometimes get trapped, so I'm familiar with that. Just musty and damp. My husband has crawled around in there, as did the inspector, and there is no sign of dampness in the crawlspace itself.

I did read somewhere on these boards (I think) that someone had dampness under a front porch which caused problems in a crawlspace. This area is pretty close to the porch, which at some point was changed from an ordinary wooden porch to a bigger, brick porch with a poured concrete floor. While the brick is new within the last 5 or 6 years, I believe the concrete is much older. There are ventilation spaces left in the bricks on all three sides. The previous owner bricked the entire house (it was previously white siding, not sure whether wood or aluminum). He poured new footers all around the foundation to support the brick and supposedly laid drains at the same time. We haven't gone searching for proof of the drains yet, but we had record-breaking rains this spring and the crawlspace remained dry, even while the cellar drowned, so I don't (yet) have reason to doubt him.

[Don M]

We have a similar situation although our cellar is large & the crawlspace is small! We run a dehumidifier year round although it works much harder in the summer due to the humid weather & condensation in the cool cellar. We have foam insulation in between the ceiling joists & the floor of the crawl space is cement! We have spring water flow through the cellar during exceptionally wet periods but it exits thru a 6" drain back out to the creek (no sump pump required! Smart old farmers.)

[melissakd]

Hi, Kingfarm. It's lovely to meet you at last! Offering moral support definitely counts; if I hadn't been there, my DH wouldn't have dared tinker with our crawl space.

Is the floor over the crawl space a single layer? or two layers? although I'm not completely sure what difference it makes as far as smells.

I get "old house cellar" smell from my floor registers, but in the room with the single layer of floorboards, which is over a crawl space, there's no smell, just cold floorboards. (We've since laid another floor in there.)

My cellar and crawl space also are adjacent, and I recommend screening the opening to the crawl space so that animals cannot tunnel into the crawl space and then hoppity-hop their furry little hides into the cellar. We don't have a neat opening like that, so we couldn't do that.

It would take so much work to make our cellar into useable space that we just decided not to bother. It is still useful for storing rocks, plastic lawn chairs and glass canning jars, though.

maybe if you just sprinkled about a quarter ton of baking soda on top of the visqueen.....

MelissaKD

[kingfarm]

I like the idea of screening off the crawlspace! It would sure make me a little more comfortable in the cellar!

There are supposedly two layers of flooring in the smelly spot. Our friend Jack, whose grandparents and then parents owned this place, tells us that he helped his parents lay the "new" hardwood floor in the 40's, and said they laid it directly over the original wide plank floor throughout the whole downstairs (the upstairs still has the original). We haven't investigated this yet.

I haven't noticed the smell near the floor vents - only from the crack into the abyss of the crawlspace.

Thanks to everyone for the welcome - I'm having more fun looking at everyone's houses!! One of these days I'll figure out how to post pics myself.