Close crawl space vents or not in winter?

[BvillePoker]

I have a pier and beam house with crawl space. I am thinking about putting some insulation in the crawl space vents this winter to try and reduce my heating bill. My floor is very cold and I have mostly wood floors. I do have insulation under my floors in my crawl space. I know there are differing opinions about closing crawl space vents. Has anyone here sealed there's and can provide what there experience was?

 

[AC_Exotic]

In the winter? Absolutely.

A couple of years ago when I was living in NEOK, we were in a house with crawl space vents. I had never lived in a house with crawl space vents.

The winter we went thru snowpacalypse (2010? 2011?) our vents were open and our water lines froze. It could have potentially been an expensive mistake.

Needless to say, I got some good advice from a friend and closed the vents. Our pipes thawed and we had water running within a couple of hours.

Close them in November and open them in April.

 

[JonnyVito]

I would close mine when I had a house with crawl space. I had one vent up front that didn't have a way of closing so I cut a piece of foam boarding and would use that to "close" the vent. If we got a good week of weather and it wasn't gonna drop below freezing I would open a couple and let it air out under the house. If you don't have any issues with water run off going under the house you shouldn't have any issues closing the vents.

 

[hollywood]

They used to advise against doing this due to condensation. But I believe the current line of thinking is that if the house is older than 10-15 yrs and there's never been flooding, then the dirt below is dry enough that condensation should not be an issue.