The last piece of a proper encapsulated crawlspace. We size the unit to your cubic footage (not by guess), plumb the condensate line to daylight or a sump, and dial in the humidistat so your crawlspace holds a steady 50-55% RH year-round.
A licensed local crew — usually out in 24 to 72 hours. Written scope, fixed price, no pressure.
The dehumidifier is what actually makes a Concord encapsulation work. I say that on almost every inspection because homeowners keep hearing from other contractors that passive encapsulation — vapor barrier, sealed vents, no dehumidifier — is a thing. Passive encapsulation is not a thing in Cabarrus County. Dew points in Concord run in the low 70s from May through September. The crawl airspace stabilizes 6 to 10 degrees cooler than outside. That temperature differential is exactly the condensation zone where water builds up on cold surfaces, feeds fungal growth, and turns the crawl into a swamp. Without an actively running dehumidifier holding the humidistat at 55 percent RH, a sealed crawl in Concord is worse than a vented one because you have trapped the moisture with nowhere for it to go.
Last month we replaced a failed 2019-vintage builder-installed dehumidifier in a 2018 Cox Mill build on Kannapolis Pkwy. Homeowner had bought the house two years ago and inherited the encapsulation and dehumidifier from the previous owner. Unit was a residential-grade 70-pint window-style dehumidifier that somebody had stuck on the crawl floor with a garden-hose drain to the sump. It had died the previous summer and nobody had noticed until the crawl RH crept to 82 percent in July and the homeowner smelled the first hint of mustiness upstairs. We tore out the failed unit, sized properly to the 2,900 SF cubic footage, and installed an Aprilaire E100 hung from the joists with a hard-plumbed drain to daylight and a discharge humidistat set to 55 percent. RH dropped from 82 to 52 percent within 12 days. The homeowner now gets an email alert if the unit stops running or drops out of range because we hooked the E100 to her home WiFi.
What follows is what actually goes into a Concord dehumidifier install, how the sizing math works for downtown pre-war houses versus subdivision builds, and why the Cabarrus County electrical permit for the dedicated circuit is not optional. Free on-site inspection anywhere in Concord, Harrisburg, Kannapolis, and out to Huntersville across the county line.
Dehumidifier sizing on any Concord crawl starts with three numbers: cubic footage, current moisture load (measured with a hygrometer during the inspection), and any known water source that is not being addressed elsewhere in the scope. A tight 1,500 to 1,800 SF Christenbury or Moss Creek build with a proper encapsulation and no active water runs an Aprilaire E070 or Santa Fe Compact 70 — both are 70-pint-per-day units rated for 2,000 SF sealed crawlspace. A 2,000 to 2,500 SF Cox Mill build runs the same E070 or Compact 70 with a little margin. A 2,900 SF Cox Mill or any downtown pre-war house of comparable footprint gets an Aprilaire E100 or AlorAir Sentinel HDi90 — 100-pint units rated for 2,800 to 3,000 SF sealed crawl.
Downtown Concord pre-war houses get sized up one class from what the cubic footage alone would suggest. The reason is the rubble-fill or dry-laid stone perimeter walls that most 1900s-1930s downtown houses have between the piers. Even with a proper mechanical termination bar bedded into intact brick courses, the wall behind the liner is going to see moisture that a subdivision block wall does not, and the dehumidifier has to compensate. On the 1919 Union St house we did last month we ran an Aprilaire E070 on a 1,650 SF crawl. Standard sizing on that cubic footage would suggest a smaller unit, but the perimeter load justified the bigger dehumidifier and it holds 52 percent RH through July on that spec.
Placement is on the ceiling — hung from the joists with the manufacturer's suspension kit. Not on the crawl floor. Ceiling mount keeps the unit off the ground where it stays dry, positions the intake at the warmest and most humid layer of crawl air (heat rises, humidity rises with it), and puts the maintenance access at a height where a service tech can work standing hunched rather than lying on his back. Drain is hard-plumbed 3/4-inch PVC to daylight where the exterior grade allows, condensate pump to the nearest waste line where it does not. Every dehumidifier we install has a discharge humidistat set to 55 percent RH — the setpoint that reliably holds under 60 through a Cabarrus County August.
The dedicated 20-amp circuit is a Cabarrus County electrical permit. Not optional. We pull it as part of every install. The reason it matters is that a shared circuit will trip on the wrong day — usually a hot July night when the dehumidifier and something else on the same breaker are both running — and if the trip is not caught for a week the RH climbs back to swamp levels and the sealed crawl becomes a mold factory. Dedicated circuit isolates the dehumidifier from any other load and the electrician labels the breaker so no future work accidentally shares it.
Aprilaire units support WiFi monitoring through the Aprilaire app and we hook every install to the homeowner's WiFi as part of the scope. Alerts fire on drain failure, humidistat out of range, filter change due, or unit offline. That is not a gimmick — the entire point of a sealed crawl with dehumidification is that you never have to think about it, and remote monitoring is what lets that be true. Santa Fe units support similar monitoring through their app. AlorAir has a hardwired remote humidistat option that some homeowners prefer for reliability.
Aprilaire E070 (70-pint/day, 2,000 SF rated) is our default for 1,500 to 2,000 SF sealed crawls in Concord subdivisions. Santa Fe Compact 70 is the equivalent alternate — same capacity, similar footprint, better dessicant efficiency at lower temperatures. Both are commercial-grade units with 5-year warranties. Aprilaire E100 (100-pint/day, 2,800 SF rated) or AlorAir Sentinel HDi90 for anything over 2,500 SF sealed crawl or any downtown pre-war house of 1,500 SF or larger. Santa Fe Ultra98 is the fourth option we spec on the largest jobs — 98-pint/day at higher efficiency than the older Santa Fe units.
Suspension kits are manufacturer-supplied — the Aprilaire hanging kit for E-series units includes vibration-damping isolators that keep the compressor from telegraphing hum into the framing above. Same for Santa Fe. Drain is 3/4-inch PVC hard-plumbed, sloped at 1/4 inch per foot minimum. Where daylight drain is not possible we install a condensate pump (Little Giant VCMA-15ULS or Sauermann SI-30) with float-switch failsafe wired to shut down the dehumidifier if the pump fails.
Electrical is a dedicated 20-amp circuit with THHN copper conductors in flex or EMT to the dehumidifier disconnect (manufacturer-supplied) at the unit. Cabarrus County electrical permit required. Circuit gets labeled at the panel with the room designation and the connected equipment. Aprilaire units connect to home WiFi through the built-in radio for app-based monitoring. Santa Fe units similar. AlorAir supports optional hardwired remote humidistat for homeowners who prefer wired reliability over WiFi.
Humidistat setpoint is 55 percent RH across all installs. Setting lower than 55 pushes the compressor into unnecessary runtime and shortens unit life without meaningful additional wood protection benefit. Setting higher than 55 gets you above 60 through August in this climate. 55 is the setpoint we have arrived at over years of monitoring installs across the metro.
Yes — Concord is a regular dehumidifier route. Free on-site inspection anywhere in Concord, fixed written quote before we touch anything.
Concord dehumidifier sizing runs one class larger on downtown pre-war houses (Union St, Cabarrus Ave, Church St) than on subdivision builds of comparable cubic footage because the rubble-fill perimeter walls in the historic stock see chronic moisture that a subdivision block wall does not. Cabarrus County electrical permitting for the dedicated circuit runs through the county office in downtown Concord, separate from Mecklenburg's system.
28025, 28027. All Cabarrus County addresses covered.
Because dew points in Cabarrus County run in the low 70s from May through September and the crawl airspace naturally stabilizes 6 to 10 degrees cooler than outside. That temperature differential creates condensation on every cold surface in the crawl even after you seal it. Without an actively running dehumidifier holding 55 percent RH, a sealed crawl in Concord becomes a moisture trap that is worse than the vented version because you have removed the pathway for the water to leave. Passive encapsulation is not a thing in this climate. The dehumidifier is what makes the whole system work.
Downtown pre-war houses get sized up one class from what the cubic footage alone would suggest. Union St, Cabarrus Ave, Church St, and the surrounding downtown blocks are pre-World War Two brick pier construction with unmortared or rubble-fill perimeter walls between the piers. Even with a proper mechanical termination bar bedded into intact brick courses, the wall behind the liner sees moisture that a subdivision poured block wall does not, and the dehumidifier has to compensate for the higher load. A 1,650 SF downtown house runs an Aprilaire E070. The equivalent Christenbury build might run the same unit but with more margin, or in some cases we can spec the smaller class.
Dedicated. Not optional on any install we do. Shared circuits trip on the wrong day, and if a shared trip is not caught for a week the RH in the crawl climbs back to swamp levels and the sealed environment becomes a mold factory. Cabarrus County electrical permit for the 20-amp dedicated circuit runs about a week from application to inspection and we handle the whole process. The additional cost of the dedicated circuit is small compared to what a failed dehumidifier costs when you find out three weeks later that the breaker tripped.
Yes and we hook every Aprilaire and Santa Fe install to the homeowner's WiFi as part of the scope. The Aprilaire app and Santa Fe app both send alerts on drain failure, humidistat out of range, filter change due, and unit offline. That is not a gimmick — the whole point of a sealed crawl with dehumidification is that you never have to think about it. Remote monitoring is what lets that be true. Homeowners in Christenbury, Cox Mill, and downtown Concord all have the same setup and I get maybe two service calls a year across the whole install base because the alerts catch issues before they become problems.
Free on-site Concord inspection. Fixed written quote. Call (980) 227-1769 or book below.