Wall liners, mechanical fasteners, and trying something new...

At Your Crawlspace, Inc, we’ve been installing encapsulated crawlspaces and selling kits to homeowners and contactors for more than six years. Our policy has always been to try to sell only those products that the installer cannot buy elsewhere at a lower price. If we can’t sell it and ship it at a savings to our customers, we advise our customers what they need (based on what we’ve found works best) and where they can purchase it.

We try to make our products as installer friendly as possible. Your Crawlspace, Inc tried countless adhesives and materials in search of a method of attaching our material to the walls. We tested many products before we found a system that can be applied to crawlspace walls without mechanical fasteners. That may not seem like a big deal to you, but mechanical fasteners add enormously to the installation labor. We tried using concrete nails to attach furring strips, concrete nails and washers to attach the liner directly to the crawlspace walls, stainless steel Tapcon screws, black powder actuated Ramset nailers, and hammer-drills with masonry bits and plastic clips. They all worked but added exponentially to the labor. The system we use and recommend has been field-tested and we recommend it because it works – without mechanical fasteners.

Several years back, we had an idea for another wall vapor barrier product that could be easily installed without mechanical fasteners and for the past two years we have been developing and testing it. It is currently patent-pending and in the final stages of testing. Earlier this summer, it was installed in several test homes for Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s ZEBRAlliance, the DOE, and the EPA. Last month these homes were featured on Kevin O’Connor’s “This New House”. A couple of months ago, our patent-pending product was installed in the first Habitat for Humanity LEED house in North Carolina. The system was installed (and I might add, well-installed) by the Habitat volunteers in a day. We are excited that our new wall liner is only months away from production and will simplify installation even more.

One of our many competitors recently wrote, “Other companies say that mechanical fasteners are not needed - This information is WRONG.” (His emphasis.) I can only assume he made that statement because he never tried our system. The same comment goes on to say, “Every professional company uses a mechanical fastener, if this step could be skipped we would skip it.” We wouldn’t recommend our system if it didn’t work. Changing one’s thinking, trying something new, and admitting someone else might have a better idea isn’t easy. I’m reminded of a quote by Henry Ford, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”