What Are the Signs Your Crawl Space Needs to Be Cleaned?

If you don’t make a point of dropping into your crawl space on a regular basis, you may not know when it’s in need of cleaning. Annual crawl space inspections make it easier to keep track of your crawl space’s status, but you can still duck down every now and then yourself to determine whether or not it may need sprucing. 

Signs to Watch For 

That said, your crawl space will also let you know if it needs cleaning. You can keep an eye out for certain signs that make their way into the rest of your home to determine whether or not it’s time to give your crawl space a once-over. 

Symptoms you’ll want to keep an eye out for can include: 

• Warping door and window frames. The doors and windows throughout your home are especially sensitive to damage. If you don’t make a point of ensuring your home’s overall health, then it may become more difficult to secure your doors and windows in place. The good news – if it can be called as such – is that if you notice your doors and windows sticking, you can head down into your crawl space to determine if damage therein may be giving your home trouble. 
• Unpleasant smells throughout your home.  While unpleasant smells in your home may not seem like the worst thing in the world to contend with, the persistent presence of those smells can make your home less comfortable to live in. Luckily, you can often trace those smells back to their source, at which point you can more readily clean out the damage in your crawl space. 

• Seepage or other signs of water damage. Water damage is always difficult to contend with. Most porous materials can absorb all manner of water that makes its way into your home. Unfortunately, furniture, wood, and even cement can begin to falter structurally when that water sets in deep. Water in your porous materials can not only ruin precious belongings, but it can also compromise the overall structural integrity of your home. The only silver lining that comes with seepage and home water damage is that you’ll know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it’s time to clear out your crawl space. 
• Mold. Mold does not get into your home via moisture, be it liquid or gaseous in form. Instead, mold gets into your home via air currents. If there is a mold cluster beneath your home or in your crawl space, those spores will have more ready access to your HVAC system. Once they begin to circulate through your home, it can be nearly impossible to get them out without replacing or deep cleaning your HVAC system. However, if you spot mold when cleaning out your crawl space, you can prevent it from spreading not only within that space but throughout the rest of your home.