First things first

Before we address any of the support issues, we all agree (us and the contractors) and know that the moisture issue needs to be addressed. We can add support until we are green in the face, but if we don't dry out the atmosphere in the crawlspace, we'll continue to battle a deteriorating foundation.

The strange thing was; we were able to get both contractors to concede that the main problem was moisture which would explain the deflection, but nobody was willing to truly test the integrity of the timber. Rather their solution was to add support to the trusses at the midspan with the justification that the spans that exist are too great for the space.

This was still very difficult for us to swallow. Of course I don't want there to be damaged timber. But I also don't want to kid myself and start pushing up on compromised wood. It still didn't make any sense that a builder who put so much emphasis on the quality of the home, would be so neglectful with something as important as the foundation. So it seems that moisture is the main culprit and that long spans should not be the issue. If long spans are not the issue, then there must be compromised timber under that foam. But once again, we concede to the professionals. But I'm going to continue to do some research.

Anyhow, what are we going to do about the moisture? Of course the more expensive vendor solution was very elaborate and expensive. If you haven't heard, there has been a shift in philosophy on how to control crawlspace moisture and atmosphere. It was previously thought that crawlspaces should be vented to allow for circulation. The method was to install vent fans throughout the perimeter of the crawlspace to create a draft, for the lack of a better term. But the latest idea is what they call encapsulation which is essentially a sealed crawlspace instead of a vented one. The less expensive vendor solution was just to put new, thicker vapor barrier down and a dehumidifier. While the more expensive vendor solution was to fully encapsulate the crawlspace with a dehumidifier as well as a french drain system that fed into a sump pump.

We ultimately decided to go with the simplest solution for now which we could augment as we see fit. We put in an industrial dehumidifier. This would serve our immediate purpose as well as be a part of any future solution if we chose to take a more elaborate approach. The dehumidifier we chose is one that covers 8,000 square feet, and we coupled that with some air movers to circulate the air in sort of a vortex motion through the crawl space. The idea here was to keep the air moving through the path of the dehumidifier so that even if moisturized air from inside or outside would get the moisture sucked out of it and re-circulated.

I think ultimately we will want to do some form of encapsulation. Because in our experience the vent fans did no good at all and possibly contributed to the root problem.