Crawl Spaces and Attics

Two places in your house that you rarely think about are your attic and crawl space. In fact, it's a good day if you are not spending any time in either of these spaces. They're probably the last places your looking when you shop for a new home, but we want to point out some of the ways these unseen spaces are far superior in a Riverwood-built house.

Crawl space

Riverwood's crawl spaces are encapsulated and conditioned. This means they are sealed from the dirt and foundation walls, and they are heated and cooled along with the rest of the house. This improves the energy efficiency of the home because the ducting is not located in a cold environment, leaking air to the outside.  As an added benefit, your floors stay warmer in the winter since the air below them is temperate. 

The crawl space is insulated with closed cell spray foam around the perimeter of the foundation. We use spray foam rather than batt insulation because it is more durable and resistant to moisture. It provides the best R-value for insulation, and it creates an airtight barrier where the floor meets the foundation. This connection between the bottom plate and the stem wall is typically the single biggest source of air leakage into and out of the house. Reducing air leakage is beneficial for energy efficiency as well as maintaining good indoor air quality for the health of the homeowner.

Unlike traditional vented crawl spaces, our encapsulated crawl spaces do not have open vents, so pests like spiders and small critters are unable to get into the crawl space. The mechanical fan operates constantly to ventilate the space and remove moisture from the air, eliminating the conditions for mold to grow. Another added benefit of the crawl space fan is that, while radon levels are extremely low in our building areas, any gases that do find their way into the crawl space will be drawn out. 

Attic

Riverwood insulates its attics deeper than the minimum code requirement. We do R-49 insulation instead of R-38 because we feel the attic is the most important part of the house to insulate to keep the home comfortable and energy efficient. The attic get's very hot during the summer and is very cold during the winter. Without thick insulation, the indoor living space can have warm or cold spots on the ceiling below the attic. 

Besides adding extra insulation in the attic, we also use extra roof vents than we are required to install. Adding extra roof vents allows more of the hot summer air to escape out of the attic. This further helps to increase the comfort inside your home during the summer and keep your air conditioner from working quite so hard.

Riverwood is unique among builders in that we do not place our furnace or our ducting outside of conditioned space. Most builders place the furnace out in the garage and run their ducting through the attic. This is the easiest approach, but the problem is that the furnace and ducting are subject to extreme temperatures and can leak a significant amount of conditioned air to the outdoors. Our ducts are located inside our temperate, sealed crawl spaces rather than in the extreme temperatures of the attic. 

So rest assured that Riverwood is painstakingly thinking of all the ways to make your house more comfortable, clean, and efficient, even in ways that you may never see. But feel free to pop open the crawl space hatch in the next house you see and take a look at how the builder has taken care of the crawl space. It may give you an insight to how the builder cares about the unseen details of construction.