Crawlspace Insulation
in Silver Valley, BC

Silver Valley is one of Maple Ridge's newest residential communities, carved out of forested hillside on the slopes above the Alouette River valley. Development here has been ongoing since the 1990s and continues today, with the community still adding new streets and neighbourhoods on the upper mountain slopes. The terrain is steep, the soils are a mix of shallow glacial till and more organic forest soils, and rainfall is higher than the valley floor due to the orographic effect of the adjacent mountains.

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.