CH 01
How Often Should a Crawl Space Be Inspected?
Crawl space problems share one advantage over you: privacy. Rot, standing water, leaning posts, and pest damage all do their early work in a space the household never enters, and by the time evidence reaches the living space as a dip or a smell, the cheap phase of the repair is usually over. An inspection trades a little scheduled attention for years of expensive surprise.
The trigger list of crawl space warning signs is short: symptoms upstairs such as sagging or bouncy floors or a persistent musty smell, a flood or major storm season, an earthquake, a purchase or sale of a raised foundation home, or simply the fact that nobody has looked in years.
CH 02
What the specialist documents under the house
The under house pass is systematic, not a flashlight sweep. Every post gets a probe test at its base, because rot starts inside the wood where eyes cannot see it. Every support gets a plumb check, every pad gets examined for cracks, tilt, and the shim stacks that mark where someone chased a problem before. Girders and joists are checked for sag, moisture staining, and pest damage. Plumbing runs are checked for the slow leaks that keep one patch of soil wet through summer.
Moisture gets traced rather than just noted: damp soil, condensation on pipes and ducts, staining on framing, and any pooled water each point back to a route, and naming the route is what turns a finding into a fix. The full route map lives on our moisture problem page.
CH 03
The measurement you cannot do by eye: floor elevations
The eye is a terrible level. A floor can be an inch out across a room and read as flat, or perfectly level and feel sloped because a doorway is racked. The elevation survey settles it with numbers: readings across the floor plan map exactly how the home sits, where it is low, by how much, and whether the low spots line up with the supports flagged below.
The survey is also your baseline. A second survey a year later turns the question is it moving into a measured answer, which is the difference between monitoring and guessing.
CH 04
What comes back to you: the written report
Everything found under the house lands in a written report in plain language: what we found, what it means, what to watch, and what, if anything, to fix, with real costs attached. Healthy crawl spaces get reports that say exactly that, and plenty of them do. Findings that warrant repair come with the reasoning laid out, from a single post replacement to a full plan pairing post and girder repair with the drainage correction that protects it.
The report is yours whether or not we ever do a dollar of work under your house. That is not a sales posture; it is how measurement first companies stay honest, because a written finding can be checked by anyone you hand it to.
CH 05
When the Inspection Finds Nothing Wrong
A meaningful share of inspections end with no repair recommended, and that outcome is worth as much as any fix. You get documentation that the supports are sound, the moisture is within normal, and the elevations are level within ordinary tolerance, plus a baseline for every future comparison. For a purchase or sale, that document answers questions before they are asked.
If something is developing but not yet actionable, the report says monitor, names what to watch, and puts a number on when to look again. Watching is a legitimate outcome; being sold something is not the price of a look.
