How to encapsulate a dirt crawlspace yourself
Contractor quotes ranging from $12,000 to $55,000 force many homeowners to encapsulate their earthy, bad-smelling dirt crawlspaces themselves. However, laying and overlapping plastic sheeting in gaps as small as 1.5 feet requires extreme physical exertion, sometimes forcing people to use 10-foot extension poles just to roll it out. This severe lack of maneuverability turns the DIY process into a grueling 20-hour crawling ordeal.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
How to encapsulate a dirt crawlspace yourself
- 1Taking on the manual labor like removing old insulation and vapor barriers yourselfDid this help you?
- 2Buying materials like a 12 mil reinforced liner directly to save costsDid this help you?
- 3Hiring a contractor just for the spray foam portion while doing the rest yourselfDid this help you?
- 4Hiring a contractor to install a waterproofing membraneDid this help you?
- 5Tearing out floors from above to access the spaceDid this help you?
- 6Using an extension pole to unroll plastic in unreachable areasDid this help you?
- 7Using thinner 6 mil plastic because it is easier to wrestle into tight spotsDid this help you?
- 8Covering whatever space is reachable and accepting partial coverageDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“70 year old cheap house with a CRAWL space, all soil. I’m thinking about laying some plastic down 10mil and overlapping it 12 inches.”source ↗
“It smells earthy and bad sometimes especially when it gets or or rains.”source ↗
“It’s a whole lot of crawling lol the gap is pretty small any advice on speeding it up? I estimated it would take me like 20 hours”source ↗
“I have a similar problem and I ended up hiring a contractor to install waterproofing membrane in the shallowest part of the house. It costed me roughly $6 grand, but I also had to tear out the floors to do it so the total job was well over 10 grand.”source ↗
“Just be glad you have 1.5 feet to work with. There were areas of mine I had to use a 10 foot extension pole to roll out the plastic.”source ↗