Crawl Space Cleared and Cleaned in Hartsdale, 680 Square Feet Floor to Joists

The instruction on this Hartsdale job was four words long: remove all contents and clean. That order is not incidental, it is the entire method. A crawl space that is being used for storage cannot be cleaned around the storage. Eight units of contents manipulation are billed on this project, which is the crew emptying the space before a vacuum is switched on, and it is the reason the cleaning numbers that follow cover the full area rather than the accessible parts of it.

What got cleaned is worth reading carefully, because it is two numbers rather than one. 680 square feet of concrete floor, and 680 square feet of joists, walls and ceiling treated with an antimicrobial agent. A crawl space is not a floor. It is a six sided box, and the underside of the house is the side that shares air with the rooms above through every gap in the subfloor. Cleaning only the floor of a crawl space addresses the surface that matters least.

Containment was set at 120 square feet with two 24 hour negative air periods running across the work, which is what keeps a cleaning job from becoming a redistribution job. Disturbing an entire crawl space without negative pressure pushes material up through the subfloor into the living space, and the homeowner experiences that as the house smelling worse after the work than before it. The last line on the job is a small one that says something about sequencing: re-sealing the openings around the foundation walls. Cleaning a crawl space and leaving the ways in open means the same conditions return.

It is a modest item on the invoice and it is the difference between a cleaning that holds and one that has to be repeated. Debris left in one dumpster or box truck load. It should be clear what this job was not. No insulation was removed, no vapour barrier was installed, and no encapsulation was performed. This was a cleaning project in New York, and the scope sold was cleaning.