Can Century Homes Be Mitigated?

With old homes comes new problems that we don't see very often. We have dealt with multiple houses that are almost 200 years old and often time there are 3 main obstacles we have to overcome.

For example, a house in Northfield, OH had a fieldstone wall with a crawlspace on the other side that we wanted to reach but we didn't want to core drill through the wall and compromise it's integrity. Though often times with those walls there are already pieces missing. This is what we looked for and we found an opening that was 3 inches in diameter, which is all we needed for our pipe.

Another challenge are the rim joists. They are often made up of solid wooden beams that can be a foot thick, not including siding or any other wooden boards. And sometimes brick as well, which is what we found in a home in Norwalk, OH. To hole saw through for our 3 inch pipe we simply take the drill and go until it bottoms out. Then we take a long screwdriver and chisel that piece out, over and over until we are through.

The last and most difficult part is the subsoil. In very old homes they wouldn't put down gravel and a lot of the time they were built on clay. Such as a house we recently did in Sandusky, OH. This gives us a very hard time with getting the airflow underneath the slab that we are looking for. However, to overcome that we can put a higher suction fan on the system or add a secondary suction point.

If you have an old home and are concerned that mitigation work can't be done, then give us a call and we'll walk you through the steps that we take to overcome a lot of the obstacles we see!