Is your home built on a crawl space?

I am not certain what you are speaking of, exactly. Do you refer to crawl space as the area under the home? There are a few options for building a home, three I can think of is the concrete floor, where the home is built on a cement slab.. There can be a small space under part of the home, but not much. These homes can have a foot or so of space. There is the home that is built over a basement mostly, and can have a crawl space or area under the home on half of the house. We have an old Tri Level. Our family room is on cement slab. No room under that. Just cement. Then the kitchen and entry and dining room are the high level on the first floor. We can enter under the house through a trap door in the hall closet. I have been down there. It is a little over 5 feet tall under there. It is clean, the wood looks new. You walk on dirt. This area we inspect regularly to make sure water hasn't leaked under the house after a bad rain. However we are in California and haven't had a bad rain in years. There a couple vents with wire mesh covering them. It doesn't provide light though like you would think. We have lanterns and lights when we go under there.

The living room is 12 inches shorter than the dining/kitchen/entry. It is harder to walk under there.

There is a lot of heating duct under this area. We have a down draft stove in kitchen so there are ducts for that underneath.It is not scary under there, but sort of lonly and still

Is that what you meant?

Our primary residence has a basement, our newly built cottage has a crawl space. I've never been familiar with a crawl space and my thought was it was going to be a damp, yukky place. NOT! Our crawl space has a cement floor, contains our furnace, water heater and water softener system. My dh made somewhat of a creeper (board on wheels) so he can easily scoot around down there. It's clean, warm and bug free!

Our house is built on a slab but our camp is a camper on a concrete slab creating a crawlspace. My DH enclosed all the way around with lattice so he could store things under there but it doesn't look messy.The camper is built on a steel frame then a piece of rubber sheeting to protect it from dampness and bugs etc getting in , then plywood floors. Since it is in Pa. it is only usable in the summer.

We have a deep crawl space that you can bend over and walk under the whole length of the house. We have vents and moisture barrier. There is a sump pump and it has a thick layer of pea gravel under the whole length of the house for a floor. When it rains very heavily the sump pump works but, for the most part, it is dry. If you have a crawl space you definitely want vents due to radon. I was told this by a radon inspector. Thankfully our builder just knew to do it!

We have a crawl space. It's creepy. We've gone in it a rare few times when we were really scared of a tornado.

It has lights, cement floor, vapor barrier and vents. It's probably 3 or 4 foot tall. The heater/AC ducts & plumbing are there.

Shoekitty - precisely! And yes, lonely and still - scary, to me. Ewww.

Thanks for the responses. I've never had a house with a "crawl space" so I'm trying to figure out how to manage it. Part of the house, the side with the garage, is on a slab, but the majority is raised up on a block foundation, and the crawl is 4-5' high. Our access is also through a trap door in the hall utility closet. For some strange reason part of the flooring is "rat crete" - low grade, rough concrete, and some is soil. I've considered a vapor barrier but it seems as if it would tear when you move around on the rocky concrete. The house is 25 years old and it has survived quite well like this. We do have vents to the outside (not fans though), and a sump pump which runs when we have heavy rain. I cajole my husband to check down there for moisture (he hates going down there, too - fear of confined spaces).

ID2 - what a great idea to construct a "creeper".

I've had HVAC and electrical contractors work in it, and they say it's better than average but I try to look ahead and stay ahead of potential problems.

Thanks for sharing your experiences. I've had it inspected and had recommendations made, but when there's a profit motive involved I want to be as informed as possible before I hire anyone.

Not sure why you're asking Sweetbay, but if you are considering purchasing a house with a crawl space, consider this: My in-laws have a home with a crawl space that is ventilated and concrete. It has 50 years of accumulated items stored in there, and now they are too old to get in there and access anything. We live 6 hours away and aren't much help Thankfully, they are putting the house on the market in the spring, so we will have time to help them clean it out, but it's a pain to get things out of there.

I'm not saying don't get a house with a crawl space; if anything, my message is don't be a packrat!

One of my homes had a crawl space. It was vented, i think it was vapor barrier with no concrete on the floor. There was nothing down there. It was for randon venting. (We live in a high randon risk area) I have to admit I NEVER went down there. My only knowledge is from the home inspections. I do remember that the 'crawl space' was actually about 6 feet in height The inspectors always needed a ladder to get in and out! They said a few more feet it would have been a basement!

It was never damp and it did not bother me that it was there. I never thought of it as creepy, just a necessity, Radon is NOT good!