Dehumidification Before & After Photos

Lawson Home Services has visited this Magnolia, DE home many times for annual follow up maintenance inspections since encapsulating the crawlspace and installing a Sedona SaniDry™ dehumidifier back in 2014. Lawson's annual maintenance service includes a thorough inspection to ensure all previously installed measures. are still functioning properly. Pumps and hoses are disassembled and cleaned, and replaced if needed.

During this visit Lawson's tech, John Carpenter, discovered a plumber had relocated the SaniDry™ within the crawlspace but failed to level the unit properly. Worse yet, the plumber had replaced the discharge line in such a way that could have completely caused the dehumidifier to stop doing its job. The discharge water was overflowing from the unit onto the floor of the crawlspace. John leveled the unit, cleaned it, removed the dirty condensate hose, and replaced it with a new one. Now the water from the dehumidifier is going where it belongs instead of back into the air from which it was removed. 

When we arrived at this customer’s home they explained that they had lived there for over twenty years.  In all that time they had never noticed any standing water issues in the crawl space adjacent to the basement, but an extremely wet winter led to them noticing that their crawl space was “wet” and it appeared that some of the exposed floor joists in the crawl had mold and/or microbial growth.  

Upon inspection we noticed that though this was the first notice of water there definitely was a humidity issue also.  They had a moisture wicking foundation which meant the concrete blocks were absorbing water from the ground and then releasing it back into the air of the crawl space resulting in an increase in humidity.  We know that mold and microbial will occur when three items are in play:  (1) mold spores, (2) a humidity over 60%, and (3) organic materials like wood.

In a typical home fifty percent of the air you breathe on the first floor of your home comes from the crawl space.  The homeowners were considering their health and how long-term exposure to higher levels of mold might affect them.

We discussed the options and the homeowner decided to get our MoldX2 and MoldX2 Botanical treatment for the existing floor joists.  We also installed our Sedona dehumidifier to help mitigate the humidity issues caused by the moisture wicking foundation. Upon the customer’s request we ducted the Sedona to treat the adjacent basement as well.  (The crawl space was less than 400SF and the Sedona can handle up to 2000SF.)  Now they have air circulating in the basement helping to filter the air and lower the humidity preventing any future musty odors or smells.