They Are Trying To Change The World–One Basement System At A Time

It’s dark. It’s damp. It’s your basement, or crawl space. And for some people in Clarksburg, it’s a labor of love to go down there and find ways to improve energy efficiency.

Basement Systems of West Virginia does work to improve the energy efficiency of homes by encapsulating crawl spaces. That means they take materials, similar to pool liner, and other things to create what they call “clean spaces.”

It’s their hope to improve conditioning and energy efficiency in these dim, dark places.

“We live in a day and age when environmental issues are very important, people are concerned about their impact on the environment. What we’re doing here is helping to reduce energy use,” said Colin Reger, of Basement Systems.

To many people, doing work down in a crawl space may seem intimidating. Randy Shillingburg, who is the director of business development for Basement Systems, says many homeowners don’t even go into their crawl spaces but a few times in a decade.

“It’s out of sight, out of mind. I don’t want to go down there because I know it’s dirty,” he said.

“If you went to probably 9 out of every 10 homes that are being built today, you would find a very thin layer of plastic on the dirt ground, and over time, you will find problems.”

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