Short Sale Pending: Moist Crawlspace

[Account Closed]

Hello,

I am pending on a short sale (built 2001) and everything looks great.... except the crawlspace.  The home is in SW Washington (Vancouver, WA ... Near Portland, Oregon) and we have been receiving a lot of rain this winter (weird).  The ground under the plastic is clay.  It is dark, moist, and has specks of mold/mildew.  I saw a couple spots of black mold forming.  Where the main water line comes up there is a small pool of water and standing water between two layers of plastic near the water line.

The gutter spouts drain to a white pvc line going somewhere.  The street gutter had a feed from the similar white water line but about four feet higher in elevation from the spouts.  One of the gutters is overflowing (on the water line side) due to clogged spout.

My question is is this a show stopper?  What can I do to mitigate the moisture issue without breaking the bank?  Would an update to the french drain system suffice?  Thank you for reading.

[Chris Gillins]

Hey Joe, 

I wouldn't say it's a deal breaker, especially in the area where we live, (I'm up in Woodland) this is pretty common. The black specs that appear in your photos just look like mildew, not mold, so some quick clean up with bleach should remove that issue. Is there a sump pump installed in the crawlspace low point? If not, a little bit of work with a shovel, some gravel and piping and you can get this taken care of on a weekend. I would also recommend looking at crawlspacedepot.com, they have a pretty good selection of products that are not terribly expensive if you want to go with the full waterproofing route. It might be worth a trip down to the local municipality, either clark county, or City of Vancouver, depending on where you live, to check out the site drainage plans and see what's going on there. 

Good luck!