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Build a Healthy Home with Effective Sub-floor ventilation

02/15/2019

The condition of the space that lies just beneath your home has a significant impact on the overall environment of the living space. If the humidity level is high, your subfloor will become damp. This dampness inevitably leads to deterioration of the floor components and causes undesirable odors that will eventually permeate into your entire living space.

Inadequate air circulation in the subfloor also creates the ideal environment for the growth of mould, fungi, and termite. Moreover, this environment can make you and your family members susceptible to different types of household allergies and respiratory problems. Therefore, if you want to ensure safety for your entire family, an effective subfloor ventilation system is a must.

A properly designed subfloor ventilation system provides numerous benefits to the occupants. The most important of these benefits is a healthy environment of the home. Most of the materials used to build a house are porous in nature. As a result, if the humidity is above the acceptable limit, bacterial spores tend to enter and propagate within the wall crevices. The indoor air of your home will experience severe contamination once the bacteria population reaches an overwhelmingly high number.

As the indoor air starts getting contaminated, there is a high likelihood of the respiratory tracts of the occupants ingesting these bacterial spores. Some of the difficulties you may experience are nausea, breathing problems, headaches, and irritations of the nose, eyes, and throat. Always remember that the children at your home are more susceptible to these health conditions.

Home structure protection is the second most important reason to install a subfloor ventilation system. Ventilation has a direct impact on the condition of your subfloor and its longevity. Uncontrolled dampness may cause serious damage to the timber structures. When exposed to excessive moisture, the wooden structures of the floor will start warping because of the expansion of the timbers. Damp also causes a volume increase of the timbers, resulting in formation of cracks on the walls. Please remember that this damage can be irreversible and may necessitate completely rebuilding the affected walls.

Subfloor ventilation is also considered to be an effective mechanism for termite control. Termites generally invade our homes in search for food and a damp subfloor without any control measure can be their happy hunting grounds. Though there are no quick fixes to termite infestation, a good subfloor ventilation system can minimise the risk of termite attacks.

Importance of ventilation: The function of home ventilation systems is to ensure the supply of adequate fresh air to your home while removing the polluted and stale air. This is why a completely sealed building is prone to water vapour build-up, undesirable odors, and indoor pollution. All these problems can be solved by proper home ventilation.

Your enclosed subfloor spaces must have subfloor ventilation so that there is a cross circulation of air from side to side as well as end to end. Therefore, if you observe any signs of inadequate subfloor ventilation, don’t waste any time to consider installing a subfloor ventilation system. These signs include lingering smells, stuffy air, condensation on the walls, and the growth of moulds and mildew.

Subfloor ventilation is also a practical alternative to address the problem of rising damp, a major structural issue for the masonry materials such as brick, mortar, and stone. Rising damp is created as result of the upward movement of moisture from the ground level through the porous building materials via capillary action. The moisture continues to rise until the level of the damp course is reached.

In most of the modern houses, the damp courses are plastic membranes running horizontally within the wall. Moisture can’t travel beyond this point because it can’t pass through the plastic membrane. However, with time, the damp courses may crack and allow moisture to pass through it. With a proper subfloor ventilation system, the capillary action causing rising floor is disturbed by the evaporation of moisture and air flow through the wall.

If your building has been experiencing moisture penetration for a long time, you will observe distinctive marks resulting from salt deposition at the edges of the affected areas. Defective surface drainage is the most common moisture source in the vicinity of the base of the buildings. Other possible dampness and moisture sources are water leakages allowing rainwater to enter the home, leaking kitchen and bathroom pipes, and faulty exhaust systems.

If you observe chronic indoor dampness at your home, immediately try to locate the moisture source and fix it. The most cost effective solution, however, is to provide sufficient subfloor ventilation and minimise the moisture sources. Also, plan your surface drainage system in a way that ensures proper drainage without affecting the base of the structure.

You may also contact ExtractAir for all your questions about building the most effective subfloor ventilation systems for your home. Calls us today fix an appointment with our experts.