Unfortunately as this industry grows there are more and more companies trying to bank a quick buck.

The product NT-FR 2000 is not a 20 vapor barrier, unless you care how thick it is at the string reinforcement. If you measure the barrier at the string (which sticks up from the barrier) it may measure 20 Mil only because there are 2 layers of string, which makes it a 5 ply.
The DrySpace™ brand crawl space vapor barrier measures almost 24 Mil at the string reinforcement, but that does not matter to us. The vapor protection is in the thickness of the polyethylene; the string is only for additional strength and plays not part in moisture control. This deception is true with their NT-1600 and NT-1200 as well, take a look at the table below or click here --> 20 Mil vapor barrier to see the 20 Mil comparison.

Fire Retardant

Fire retardant is an additive put into the polyethylene to suppress flame spread. The first thing we need to understand is everything on earth will burn and polyethylene is no different. When a fire retardant is added to a vapor barrier the goal is to have the plastic extinguish on its own when the flame source is removed. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction; The more fire retardant that is added the more smoke there is once the flame goes out. That is why the tests are designed to measure both flame spread and smoke development. The closer the product gets to a 0 flame spread, generally the higher the smoke development and the lower the smoke development the higher the flame spread. As you can see it takes trial and error to get a acceptable level of both. The manufacture did not design this product to be used in crawl spaces; it was designed for equipment storage, landfill covers, athletic field covers, crop protection etc. So you can see why it is far more important for this product to have a strong flame control than it is to have a strong smoke control with these types of outdoor uses. This product has a flame spread of 5 and smoke development of 80, which less than 50 is required for most building codes.
We can get this product for you at a better price if you feel it fits your needs better.
The company that renamed these products, NT-FR 2000, NT-1600, and NT-1200 buys them and then resells it. They mark up the real thickness, and then mark up the price to compete with our products and give free shipping. We are offering free shipping in February on all orders over $250 and we will do the same with this product. Please call our office to order if you wish to use this product in your crawl space instead of the DrySpace™ brand. I am certain we can get you a much better price as well as extend our expertise to help you get it installed.

The easiest way to know what you’re getting is by finding out what it weighs!

When it comes to the phrase "light weight heavy duty material", well there is no such thing. It's either light weight or heavy duty; they are two completely different classes. This term is used by this company to describe their products, probably to assure you that it is strong but not very heavy. With a material like polyethylene there is not much difference in weight, only depending on how much high density and low density polyethylene is used to make the barrier. All vapor barriers are weighed per 1000 square feet and that weight does not vary much more than one or two pounds. In the case of the NT-FR 2000 it weighs 74 pounds per 1000, when a real 20 Mil will weigh in at around 105. So if you see two polyethylene barriers one weighing even 10 pounds less, that is a signal that it has less polyethylene in it and therefore not as thick. Take a look at the other weight differences on the tables below to see what I mean. Oh, one more thing- all of these numbers were taken from the other company's site so they are accurate. Also know that their business is selling water and furnace filters not fixing crawl spaces.

The definition of antimicrobial according to Wikipedia.org-

"An antimicrobial is a substance that kills or inhibits the growth of microorganisms[1] such as bacteria, fungi, or protozoans."

It is a cheap additive to a crawl space vapor barrier and an ingenious marketing scam. The truth is; mold, mildew and fungus need an organic food source to grow. Polyethylene, polypropylene, PVC and other plastics are not made from an organic source, therefore are not food for fungus's like mold and mildew. This means mold will not grow on the plastic unless an organic material has been added to the plastic. Polyethylene is used in many water and moisture containment products all over the world without an antimicrobial additive. I must admit that in the crawl space world, offering a product that implies you will never have mold in your crawl space because the vapor barrier has an "antimicrobial" in it, sounds great. So I researched it quite a while ago. Here's what I found; Most antimicrobial are designed and marketed to protect and kill bacteria on the skin, like soap, and to protect our clothes from smelling dirty (after one wearing) by adding it to the fabric itself. The purpose is to kill the bacteria that lives on our skin causing body odor. It is also used in cat litter, pillows and baby wipes. So the question remains, will it prevent mold growth in the crawl space? The answer is NO. It will keep mold from growing on the vapor barrier, but mold wont grow there anyway. And the whole purpose of making the investment in your crawl space is to keep the moisture levels down below 55% so mold cant grow at all. I know for sure that the antimicrobial additive in the vapor barrier will not stop mold growth on your wood structure, which by the way is an organic food source and more likely to have a problem with mold.

So maybe your thinking, what about mold growing under the crawl space vapor barrier? After all, there is going to be a lot of moisture there. My answer to that is, if the crawl space is properly prepared and cleaned out there will not be any food under the vapor barrier either. An antimicrobial is not needed as a vapor barrier additive in plastic to prevent mold growth. If it were, plastic would not be a good product to use in a crawl space or as a vapor barrier period. It all comes down to marketing, product sales and money.

A very common question in the repair process is; what is the right way to insulate my crawl space? This is a complicated issue and does not have a simple answer. What makes matters worse is the amount of readily available wrong and misleading information on the internet.
There are three areas that can be insulated, but not all three should be insulated. The three areas are; floor joists, rim joist and foundation walls.

Floor joist insulation-
The floor joist area, or the crawl space ceiling, is the most commonly insulated area. This area is usually insulated with fiberglass and held in place with metal wire or staples. The fiberglass insulation in nearly half of the homes that have insulation in this area has it installed wrong. The fiberglass insulation should be installed with the paper vapor barrier on the heated or conditioned side of the space. This means the paper should be closest to the floor boards and not exposed to the crawl space. Until 2003 insulating your floor joist was the only option if you wanted to have any hope of keeping the winter air from entering your home. Today there is a better and more efficient way to make your home more comfortable and energy efficient.

Rim Joist Insulation-
The rim joist area is the part of the wood structure under your floor. Like the floor joists, the rim joist’s job is to help hold up the floor and walls of the home. The rim joist goes around the perimeter, or the rim, of the home and its primary job is to support the exterior walls as well as giving the floor joist an adjacent surface to be attached. Other names for this area are band joist, sill box and bond.

Foundation Wall Insulation-
Insulating the foundation walls is a complete waste of money IF you have an open crawl space. A crawl space with foundation vents that can be opened and closed is considered and open crawl space. It is considered open because the vents, even while closed, offer little protection from the elements outside the home. An open crawlspace with rigid insulation on the foundation walls is like having the walls of your home insulated and opening the windows. It neutralizes the usefulness of the insulation by having the open vents/windows.

When it comes to installing insulation, ask yourself- Am I trying to keep something in or am I trying to keep something out. They seem like the same question, but they’re not. For example, with a vapor barrier you are trying to keep something out, the moisture. With insulation, you are trying to keep something in, your conditioned air. Knowing this helps the process to move forward in the right order. With insulation and a vapor barrier like DrySpace properly installed in your crawl space you can now begin to control the environment under your home. Now your crawl space is part of your home and you should protect it from the outside as such. The days of separating your home from the crawl space is over, mostly because it is impossible to do. It is far more reasonable to accomplish a plan to protect your crawl space from the outside than it is to protect your home from the crawl space and the outside.

So the recipe goes like this:
1. Close foundation vents permanently with a cement block
2. Install rigid foam insulation on the foundation walls
3. Install R-19 fiberglass in the rim (band) joist area
4. Install DrySpace vapor barrier on the floor and walls
Doing this will eliminate the freezing cold floors, high energy costs and freezing water lines. If you have any questions please feel free to contact us, 877.379.7658

We heard about this some time ago, and the short answer is NO. Here’s why, every crawl space is different and takes a slightly different approach to do it right. The other guys would have you believe that you must take our product into the crawl space as a full roll and somehow man handle it to fit your crawl space. That our products are too big and bulky to efficiently work with in such a tight area and that it is nearly impossible to do. So, they will cut each piece of their product for you so you are working with much smaller amounts of material or “fabric” and therefore this difficult job will become nearly as easy as baking a pie.
We have all heard the phrase, if it seems too good to be true then it probably is. Here is what they don’t want you to know, everyone installing anyone’s products has to cut the barrier on the job site before it goes into the crawl space. That is how they do it, I do it and every other professional does it, but in turn advises you differently. This is not as easy as baking a pie and having your pieces cut by anyone not actually installing it could end up being a nightmare patch job. I have personally installed over 300 jobs in Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, North Carolina, and Tennessee and I have never cut my pieces before hand and taken them to the job to be installed. The only way it would work is to be wasteful and over estimate everything or expect to do a lot of patching.
If you really think about it you would need instructions just to know what piece went where and that is before you even think about how to install it. So once you sort out what pieces are your walls and which are your floors you need to decide which wall pieces to start with and where they go. So when you have the walls figured out you have to take them in and install them. They claim you do not need mechanical fasteners for their product. That sounds easy enough, until you have to keep gluing it back up to the wall. Then, what if your measurement was off by 6”, which makes their cut off by 6” and your walls are too short to reach the floor piece? I could keep going but I think you get the idea. Encapsulating a crawl space is not like putting together a cheap entertainment system from Wal-Mart. It takes a plan and proper preparation and most certainly it takes the installer cutting his or her own pieces of vapor barrier to get it done right with minimal waste. They know this, but chose to make this process seem so easy they can do most of the work for you from their house. How many home improvement projects have you done as a DIY’er go exactly as planned? Ever have to go back to the home improvement store to get more material because it didn’t go like you thought? This type of project is no different. It’s your home and you have final say on what you buy and how you buy it but don’t get roped into this kind of sales pitch.

Matt

What if I have a leak from a pipe after I have my crawl space sealed up? I will have a swimming pool under my house, should I have some kind of drain installed in the vapor barrier?

This question usually arises after meeting with a franchise company that sells a drain for their vapor barrier system. The product pitch is designed to settle a fear of what if my crawl space gets water in it from a frozen pipe or broken water line. The drain is designed with a ping pong ball under a drain cover that will float when water enters the drain. Once the water is gone the ball then returns to cover the opening leaving the homeowner with the understanding that they will have to do nothing for clean up. Pretty ingenious if you only look at the pro's of the design.

So lets take a look at the con's to better determine if a drain in the vapor barrier is a good idea. The same mechanism that allows water to enter the drain, the ping pong ball, will also allow the water to enter your crawl space from under the vapor barrier. If the power goes out and your sump pump is temporary not pumping water and the water backs up, then the ping pong ball will float and allow water to get on the barrier. In this scenario the water will be dirty allowing mud to settle and making the clean up a much bigger job.

Another major flaw in this design is what if the drain is on the west end of the crawl space and you have a leak at the east end? Unless the drains are placed throughout the crawl space under each bath, kitchen and laundry it is not likely the water wouldn't go into the drain in the first place. In order to fix this 'what if' it causes more compromises in the barrier and in many different locations.

Beyond these two problems, if the crawl space is sealed properly the threat of frozen water lines is very unlikely. Frozen water lines is a condition of an open crawl space not a closed or conditioned one. Which is what you would be paying for, so why the back up plan? Moreover, the chances of a power outage happening during a heavy rain storm is far more likely. This situation causes the threat of water entering the crawl space, while the sump pump is down, and then making the chances of water entering through the drain a real problem. This problem is probably one of the reasons you were talking to them in the first place. In my opinion, the sales pitch diverts the focus of the real threat to a "what if" situation to build confidence in a product line. Know this, sales pitches are designed to really accomplish one thing- psychological dominance. To present, convince and close the sale. The drain is not the focus of the pitch it is an example of setting a fear and presenting a solution to build confidence in the system.

So what do you do if a pipe breaks or the washer over flows? I say handle it "IF" it happens. By cutting a small slice in the crawl space vapor barrier to allow the majority of water to drain into the drain system or under the barrier. By doing it this way you can drain the water where the water is and not have to push it to a fixed drain. Then once the water is gone and you have mopped up the last puddle, tape the slice with the same tape used to seal your lap seams. This gets you as good as new and the option to simply remove the tape "IF" it happens again. This process handles any real problems not just the threat and it does not cause any new ones.