How Does Water Enter My Crawl Space?

Your crawl space will always be the most humid part of your home. This is because there are many ways for water to enter a crawl space. Unless your crawl space is fully waterproof, there will always be some way for water to enter the space. A crawl space sump pump is part of the waterproofing solutions you should invest in for your foundation because it’s able to drain out water that enters the crawl space from places such as: 

Vents, Doors, and Openings 

Crawl spaces are not waterproof, and this is by design. It was once believed that vents and openings could help with the airflow in a crawl space, but now we know that this isn’t the case. Vents and openings do nothing more than allow water and warm air into the crawl space, doing the opposite of what they are meant to do and increasing the humidity levels of the foundation. Even newer houses are still being built with vents due to outdated building codes. 

Crawl space doors also are not waterproof. They are simply meant to provide easy access into the crawl space, but they do a poor job of keeping water out, especially if the door is old and made of wood. Some crawl space doors are located inside the house, sometimes in the laundry room. If there’s ever any kind of flooding because of a broken washing machine, then it’s quite easy for water to seep through the door. 

The Walls and Soil 

The concrete walls that make up your crawl space may seem solid and impenetrable, but if you look closely, you can see that it has pores. Concrete is a porous material, so moisture can very easily permeate through the walls. Charlotte, NC gets around 15 more inches of rain annually than the rest of the United States. More than just water vapor permeating through, crawl spaces in this region see water seepage from the walls, especially during the rainiest months between May and August. 

If you have a dirt crawl space, then the water also could come from the soil because of the water table, which is an invisible line that indicates where the zone of saturation starts. The zone of saturation is where the soil is permanently saturated with water. The depth of the water table can vary greatly throughout the same city, and it can even be just a few inches below the surface. Because of how much it rains in Charlotte, NC, the water table can rise to the point where groundwater leaks into the crawl space. Therefore, homeowners with dirt crawl spaces often find standing water in their foundation even though they have vent covers or they’ve patched up any openings along the concrete walls.