Crawlspace Insulation
in Cloverdale, BC

Cloverdale is one of Surrey's oldest communities, with a historic town centre that predates the modern municipality. The residential areas around the historic downtown and extending into the surrounding rural fringe have housing stock that spans from early 20th-century farmhouses to contemporary subdivisions, but the most common crawlspace problems we encounter are in the mid-century stock from the 1950s through the 1970s. These homes were built with vented crawlspaces on soils that are a mix of silty loam and clay — reasonable in dry periods but slow to drain after the extended wet seasons typical of the Fraser Valley.

The majority of homes in Surrey and the surrounding communities built before 2000 have fiberglass batt insulation installed between the floor joists in the crawlspace. When this insulation was new and dry, it provided reasonable thermal resistance. The problem is that fiberglass batts installed in a vented crawlspace environment in a high-rainfall climate like ours rarely stay dry. They absorb ambient moisture, sag out of their cavities, and gradually collapse onto the ground. Wet fiberglass insulation has essentially zero R-value, adds weight that can pull down on vapor barriers or staples, and provides a hospitable nesting environment for rodents.

For crawlspaces that are not being fully encapsulated, we install new unfaced fiberglass batts or mineral wool between the joists, but only after addressing the moisture conditions that destroyed the previous insulation. Installing fresh batts into a still-damp crawlspace environment means you'll be back in the same situation within a few years. Proper sequencing matters: drainage, vapor barrier, then insulation.