St. Petersburg · Pinellas County, Florida
That smell? It’s coming from under the floor.
Most of St. Pete’s old bungalows sit over open dirt, breathing Gulf humidity through vents somebody cut in 1926. We seal it, dry it, and hand you the numbers that prove it — one fixed price, whether or not you hire us.
- 45minUnder the house with a moisture meter and a flashlight. Every pier, every joist bay.
- $0For the report and the photographs. If nothing is wrong down there, you hear it from us first.
- 1Number. Fixed, in writing, after we have seen it. Not a range, not a “starting at.”
What is happening down there
What sealing it changes
- Gulf air walks in through the vents. That was the plan in 1926. In August it arrives already carrying most of the moisture.
- The dirt breathes too. Bare Florida soil gives off water all day and all night, so the space is wet from below as well.
- It hits the cool underside of your floor and sweats. Joists, ducts, subfloor. That is the smell, the cupped boards, the dripping ducts.
- The house inhales it. Warm air rises, and whatever is under the floor ends up in the living room.
- A reinforced liner over every inch of dirt and up every pier, seams lapped and taped. The ground stops breathing into the space.
- Vents shut. The outside is no longer invited, so August stays outside.
- One crawlspace-rated dehumidifier holds it dry year-round. The floor above stays dry with it. Its model number is in your quote.
Why people call us
You notice it upstairs long before you look down there
None of these proves anything on its own. Two of them, in an old raised house, usually do.
- The smell that comes back every August You have cleaned. You have bought the plug-ins. It is rising through the floor from a hundred years of damp dirt.
- Cupped floors, sweating ducts, a cooling bill that makes no sense Three problems, one cause. Your AC is fighting a swamp under the house.
- Water under the house after a storm Where it got in matters more than how much is down there. Sometimes the fix is a downspout.
- Something is living down there Raccoons, rats, fallen batts, a 1950s water heater. Cleanout comes first; there is an order to this.
- Floors that bounce, dip or slope We will look and photograph it. If it is structural we will say so, and tell you who is licensed to fix it. That is not us.
Before you call anyone
Do you even have a crawlspace?
Probably not. Only 4.2% of St. Pete’s single-family homes have one, and nobody should be selling you crawlspace work on a slab. Three questions from the sidewalk sort most houses.
The full five-minute walkaround, and how to look up your parcel →
How it works
Four steps. You own the report either way.
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We crawl it
Every pier, every joist bay, every duct run. Moisture readings on the subfloor, not a flashlight sweep from the hatch.
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You get the photos
A written report with pictures of what is actually under your house. Yours to keep, whether or not you hire us.
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A fixed price, in writing
Scope, materials, thickness of the liner, model of the dehumidifier. No "starting at" pricing.
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We clean it and seal it
Debris out, ground and piers sealed, rim joists insulated, air dried. Then photos of the finished space from the same spot.
Recent work
What finished looks like
Every photograph on this site is one of our jobs, a few streets over. You get the same pictures of your own crawlspace: before, during and after.
What we do
Five things. Priced in writing.
The ranges are Tampa Bay market data, what these jobs usually cost, so you can sanity-check any bid, ours included. Your number is fixed after the evaluation, and the quote names the liner thickness and the dehumidifier model, so “encapsulation” cannot mean whatever is cheapest that week. How we read those numbers.
Crawlspace Encapsulation
The whole job: liner across the dirt and up the piers, vents shut, air dried. The crawlspace stops being outdoors.
$4,350–$8,050typical range, Tampa Bay
Vapor Barrier Installation
Liner over the dirt and nothing else. The cheaper first move when the ground is the problem and the vents are not.
$1,275–$2,805typical range, Tampa Bay
Crawlspace Cleanout
Whatever the last hundred years left under there, out. Batts, debris, nests, the mystery water heater.
quoted after evaluation
Crawlspace Insulation
Closed-cell foam or mineral wool at the rim joist. Fiberglass in a Florida crawlspace ends up on the ground, wet, within a few summers.
$765–$2,295typical range, Tampa Bay
Crawlspace Dehumidifier
A crawlspace-rated unit sized to the space, raised on stands, drained properly. Not a box-store dehumidifier on a bucket.
$612–$1,785typical range, Tampa Bay
Why us
You will meet the people doing the work
Search for crawlspace repair in St. Pete and you get four national franchises: a call center, a commission-paid inspector, and a crew you have never met. We are two people, and one of us is the one under your house.
- Shane Goforth does the evaluation and the work. He is not a salesperson and has no interest in becoming one.
- Joseph Grimsley runs the office: scheduling, quotes, invoices. You get a call back the same day, from a person.
- One fixed price in writing, materials and equipment named. No “starting at.”
- We will tell you when you do not need us. Slab houses and dry crawlspaces get a straight answer and no invoice.
Where we work
We counted every raised home in the county. Then we went and looked.
The county record marks a beach house with a garage underneath the same as a 1920s bungalow on brick piers. So we checked, area by area, and kept only the homes that are really on a crawlspace. Treasure Island went from 674 to 138.
Common questions
Before you call
Three that come up on nearly every call. More on the costs page.
- Do homes in St. Petersburg even have crawlspaces?
- Only about one in twenty-four. The Pinellas County tax roll records 3,368 single-family homes in St. Petersburg with a wood floor over piers, out of 79,391 — 4.2%. Florida moved to slab-on-grade construction after the Second World War and most of the county sits on a slab with nothing underneath to service. The crawlspace homes cluster where the pre-war and early post-war housing is: Historic Kenwood and the Central Avenue corridor, Lealman and north St. Pete, Downtown and Roser Park, the Old Northeast, and Gulfport. If yours was built before 1950 with a row of small vents in the foundation, it is probably one of them.
- What does crawlspace encapsulation actually involve?
- Sealing the space off from ground moisture and outside humidity. A reinforced vapor barrier goes across the entire ground surface and up the foundation piers and walls, seams are taped and terminations sealed, rim joists are insulated, and humidity is managed with a crawlspace-rated dehumidifier so the space stays dry year-round instead of breathing wet Gulf air.
- Is the inspection really free?
- Yes, and you keep the report either way. We crawl the whole space, photograph every pier and joist bay, take moisture readings on the subfloor, and email you a written report with the photographs. If your house is on a slab, or the crawlspace is genuinely fine, we say so and there is no invoice.
Find out what is actually under your house
A free evaluation, photographed and written up, whether or not there is a job in it for us.