Maximize Crawl Space Defense with DIY Pump Strategies Episode 1 of 2

Unlock the secrets to transforming your home with insights from Michael Kushler, a DIY enthusiast who tackled the challenges of his crawl space in Northern Virginia head-on. We promise you'll walk away with practical tips on improving crawl space functionality and avoiding costly professional interventions. Michael's story is one of grit and resourcefulness. Faced with mold, water intrusion, and ineffective storage, he took matters into his own hands, guided by the expertise of Crawl Space Ninja. Discover how he upgraded his sump pump system, installed a battery backup, and regraded his driveway to protect his home from water damage, all while emphasizing the crucial role of regular maintenance.

In a compelling follow-up, we break down the essentials of sump pump installation and upkeep, focusing on the necessity of having both primary and backup systems. Join us as we recount a real-life episode where a backup sump pump prevented a flooding disaster during a power outage. From addressing potential cold-weather issues like frozen discharge lines to assessing your home's unique needs, we cover it all. Learn why multiple pumps might be necessary for larger crawl spaces, especially those near bodies of water, and how a little preparation can save you from a deluge of trouble. Whether you're a seasoned DIYer or just starting, this episode equips you with the knowledge to keep your home safe and dry.

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Check out Michael's book, "Crawl Space Repair Myths-Busted" now available on Amazon!

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Need help: https://crawlspaceninja.com or https://diy.crawlspaceninja.com

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, michael Church here with Michael Kushler and
I'm going to talk to him today.
He's done his own crawl space.
He's one of the DIY ninjas outthere and we're going to share
with you a little bit about whathe's done, so stay tuned.
All right, so if you're new toCrawl Space Ninja, we talk about

(00:26):
everything related to basements, attics, crawl spaces and duct
work, and we got a special guestwith us today, michael and
Michael tell us a little bitabout yourself.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Sure, thank you, michael, for having me on.
My name's Michael Kushler.
I live here in the NorthernVirginia area.
I've been following Crawl SpaceNinjas for a long time, which
prompted me to start my own DIYproject in a crawl space that
needed a lot of work, so happyto be on here today.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
Well, we appreciate you coming, Michael, and just so
you know, that is not a pictureof his background, of his crawl
space.
Behind him he's literally inhis crawl space right now,
talking to us, and just wantedto.
You know, it's amazing to seesome of these videos and things
of people like yourself thathave decided to tackle their own
crawl space.

(01:11):
We get a lot of people thatsend us pictures and everything.
We thought that you had aunique situation, so please go
into some of the problems youwere having and tell us why you
decided to do your crawl space.
Michael, what was the thingthat prompted you to invest your
time and money to fix a part ofyour house that I assume you

(01:33):
don't hang out in, right?
I mean, this is unless you madea crawl cave, right?
That may be a new thing.
Instead of a man cave, we'llcall it a crawl cave, right?
So tell us a little bit aboutthat please, certainly.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah, I'm definitely in here a lot more often than I
used to be, that's for sure.
We bought this house aboutthree years ago and at that time
we liked everything else aboutthe house.
We knew the crawl space neededsome work, but we were new
homeowners and so didn't reallyknow the extent of work that it
might need.
We were new homeowners and sodidn't really know the extent of
work that it might need, but,as you saw in some of the before
pictures I showed you, you know, the insulation that they had

(02:11):
in here was fiberglass batinsulation.
It looked very, very dirty andpossibly moldy.
We had some minor waterintrusion issues as well.
Anytime it rained really heavy,there was an existing vapor
barrier that was laid down, butthere were places where it was

(02:31):
kind of squishy, a little bitlike a water bed after really
heavy rains.
So I knew that we definitelyneeded to take a look and do
some work on it, startedresearching prices to get a
professional company in to dothe work and decided it was
worthwhile to do the researchmyself Our crawl space is about
425 feet, so not a huge job andfound you, michael, and your
company online through YouTube,dove right down into that hole,

(02:54):
learning everything I could fromyou guys and really appreciate
all the information that you putout there, because we had I
mean, you name it, we had waterintrusion.
The more I looked into it, wehad some mold growth up in the
rim joists in particular.
We didn't have any usefulinsulation.
We had to rip all of that outand just generally, the crawl
space wasn't usable for storageeither.

(03:15):
We had put some things intostorage here, not understanding
that the humidity level wasreally high, and ended up having
to throw out a bunch ofpictures that had gotten a
little bit moldy, things likethat.
So we knew we had to dosomething.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
Yeah, that's a common practice here.
People tend to put things thatyou wouldn't think about and
then they'll put the lawnmowerin the crawl space, right.
So the thing about thelawnmower is you got all those
grass clippings all inside thelawnmower, so you take something
that's wet and nasty and throwit in an environment and then

(03:49):
those grass clippings start togrow mold and then they affect,
or infect, if you will,everything else inside of the
crawl space.
I don't know if you did thatparticularly, but you don't need
a catalyst like that to growmold in a crawl space.
All you need is the moistureand the humidity to be high, and
you said you had standing wateras well.
You had flooding coming in.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
We had yeah, we had some water coming in.
It was under the vapor barrierbut we could feel it like a
waterbed kind of squishing backand forth.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
You had quite a bit then.
So, uh, now, is that, uh, isthat a sump pump?
I see there behind you, next tothe dq.
Is that a battery backup?
Is that what that is?

Speaker 2 (04:23):
yeah, that was.
That was one of the firstthings I did.
We had an older sump pump thatcame with the house, so bought,
bought the new sump pump, boughta battery backup, um, which I
can say paid for itselfimmediately.
We had a power outage when thatbattery backup was going off.
That was really good.
But the first thing I startedto do, too, was take a look at
where water might be coming inclose to the foundation.

(04:43):
So we got downspout extenders,things like that.
But also we realized that thedriveway that we had it slopes
down towards the house, towardsone of the corners of the house,
and so anytime we had reallyheavy rain it was just like a
luge for water that was comingdown that way.
So the first thing we did was,you know, regrade and redo that
driveway so that the water wasgoing in the right direction.

(05:04):
That really resolved the waterintrusion issue.
We have French drains aroundthe perimeter here that go to
the sump pump, but I think atthat time it was just
overwhelming the system that wehad Right.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
So even with a interior French drain system in
the crawl space, that drivewaywas still putting on more water
than the system could handle.
Is that what you're saying?
Yeah, exactly.
So that's a good point and Iwant all the viewers to
understand that.
You know an interiorwaterproofing system, whether
it's a basement or a crawl space, could still take on more water

(05:35):
than just because of thedownspouts like you're talking
about.
Around in Knoxville we've got alot of mountainous areas, so
you've got a big, huge hillbehind you that's pouring water
onto your houses and things likethat.
So it's a good point to goahead and address the outside as
well as the inside, and itsounds like your outside may

(05:56):
have fixed it, but a lot ofpeople they need to do both,
because once that water finds away in, it's always going to
take the path of leastresistance.
So the outside is important,but you still should consider
the interior as well, and itsounds like you did both, but
you did the interior first.
Is that?

Speaker 2 (06:12):
right, did the exterior first, to make sure-.
Oh, did the exterior first tomake sure that the water wasn't
coming.
We then weren't having anystanding water issues and then
started handling the interior,starting with making sure we
control the humidity, get a newsump pump in there, and then
tackled the brave new world ofputting up the vapor barrier and

(06:32):
insulation around the walls andthen redoing the vapor barrier
myself too.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
Oh, that's great.
That's great.
Real quick I want to go back toyour battery backup.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
You said it was one of the best investments you made
.
Can you elaborate a little?

Speaker 1 (06:46):
bit on that, because it's astonishing to me that
people will go through the timeand the effort and the expense
of putting in a sump pumpwithout a battery backup.
So do you mind sharing with mewhat you meant by it was one of
your better investments.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
Yeah, absolutely.
I can tell you a couple ofquick stories of when it made me
realize that it was a goodinvestment.
We put it in and it's two sumppumps.
We've got the main sump pumpand then there's a smaller sump
pump, backup sump pump that'shooked up to the battery backup

(07:21):
and so that float switch ishigher.
So if the main sump pump failsfor whatever reason and the
water continues to rise, thenthe battery backup kicks on and
it sounds an alarm, so that youknow it's working and you know
to come down and take a look atthe main sump pump.
So we had one incident where,pretty soon after we installed
it, we had a power outage andyou know, in times of heavy rain
that's when you're more likelyto have a power outage.
So the main sump pump wasn'table to run and the battery

(07:42):
backup kicked on and, you know,did that for an hour.
A couple of different cycleswhich made me realize, hey, we
would have had standing water inthe crawl space if we hadn't
had that in.
There was another time when Iheard the battery backup going
off and I wasn't sure why thatwas.
It was the middle of winter, itwas really cold and what I

(08:03):
realized what was happening.
I came down and checked thesump pump.
The water level had risen andit was just was churning and
bubbling like a hot tub in there, and that is because the exit
line had frozen and was blockedup and so nothing was getting
out.
But at least I had that alarmto let me know that there was
something wrong, went down therethen was able to get the ice

(08:25):
out of the exit line and solvethat problem too.

Speaker 1 (08:29):
Wow, so that I have.
We don't get as cold of wintersas you do in Virginia, so we're
not dealing with icing up ofdischarge lines like apparently
you are.
So that is great information,because I never thought that the
icing up of the discharge linewould cause that alarm to go off
.
So that's wonderful that youhad that down there.

(08:49):
Did you put after it iced up?
Did you put anything on theexterior to keep that from
happening?
Did you modify it in any way?
What did you do to fix that.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
Yeah, I put some additional insulation around the
exterior of it and what it was?
It was kind of a.
It was a little bit of a freakweather incident.
We had a I think they werecalling it the bomb cyclone at
that time.
So it was really cold.
It was like 30 below, whichisn't consistently that cold
here in Virginia.
But it prompted me to take acloser look at how much of that

(09:21):
drain line was exposed and didsome more insulation on there.

Speaker 1 (09:24):
Well, and if you're going to take the time to fix
your crawl space, you've got toprepare for those anomalies.
If you will.
You know, it's kind of likelike you fixing the exterior
water problem is great, but youknow, here in Knoxville in
January of 19 and January of 18,we took on five inches of rain
in four hours, you know.

(09:45):
So you've got to prepare forthose things.
Now, they said it was onceevery 10 years and all that.
Well, we had it twice in a row.
Like two years in a row we hadthat much rain.
So you've got to make sure.
Uh, now how you said you gotabout four or 500 square feet,
is that correct?

Speaker 2 (09:59):
That's right, yeah, 425.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
Okay.
So one of the things that ahomeowner can do is, if you've
got a big crawl space, Irecommend that you do a sump
pump pit and a sump pump aboutevery 140 linear feet.
You wouldn't need it in yoursbecause yours is fairly small,
right, but when you get a largecrawl space you know 1,800,
2,000 and up it's very hard forthe water at the far end of that

(10:22):
crawl space to make its way allthe way to that sump pump.
So we encourage you to staggersump pumps.
The counter to that is if youhave 400 something square feet,
like you've got Michael, butmaybe you're near a lake or a
body of water where you'retaking on a lot of water, or you
had that problem with thedriveway that you couldn't
resolve and you were taking onextra water, then adding another

(10:45):
sump pump, even in a smallercrawl space, to handle that
extra load is very important.