The crawl space under our house.

Our house had a high humidity issue last winter. This is probably due to water pooling along the east side after rain. This water/moisture found it's way under our house. Also, the down spouts didn't direct the water away from the foundation around the rest of the house. Early last spring along with installing our raised bed out front I put in a french drain to alleviate the pooling issue.

During this past summer at my job we installed solar on a house that had the crawlspace finished-off with a heavy-duty big top style tarp. It was sealed to the edges of the foundation and made for the most pleasant crawl space. I instantly thought 'I wish I had some billboard tarp like I used everywhere on the farm.'

I called all the billboard advertisements for billboards in search of my quarry. All my efforts ended with "no, our customers don't want their branding misappropriated." As the summer sped by my search became more frantic. Finally, Tabitha found a place that sells used billboard tarp online--they re-print black over the Advertisements. The prices are substantially more than I wanted to spend but still an excellent value. We bought some.

Under our house was a significant amount of urbanite scattered around trying to poke holes in my newly purchased vapor barrier tarp. Yesterday Toly, Kassi and I began the arduous process of removing the urbanite. Most kids would be horrified of going under a house where a spider might live in the dark. I admit they were a little scared at first--I cleared most of the cobwebs prior to soliciting their help. Their residual fear was easily overcome with the prospect of helping Daddy work. They are such good kids.

We hauled over two dozen full five gallon buckets of the smaller pieces and the better part of a pickup truck bed full of the larger pieces. Some of the pieces took both Toly and Kassi pushing and rolling to get them out. We worked and worked. After several hours, Tabitha suggested that we take a break and go to the local nursery. Boy am I glad for that because I am very sore today and surely would have been much worse.

After church today I'll install tarp on the Western half of the house after a few more buckets of little pieces. The eastern side will be a bit more tricky I'll need to cut-in around the chimney foundation and other obstacles.

Once this tarp is down I will start installing some pex lines for some under floor radiant heat. I have some electrical things to finish. Then there is the task of removing all the galvanized plumbing and replacing it with copper. But, first I will install some lighting under there to make all the above work easier.

I'll add some photos to this post later today... so check back.