Total Home Performance

As the Eastern Shore and Anne Arundel County's experts in healthy homes, energy efficiency upgrades, crawl space encapsulation and repair, and more, the team at Total Home Performance has seen it all. Using our building science-grounded approach, we've remedied every situation with the professionalism and expertise that comes with performing well over 1,500 encapsulations to date! An energy efficient home is a safer and more comfortable one, with fewer drafts, lower energy bills, higher resale value, and healthier indoor air quality.

Total Home Performance can provide solutions that most contracting companies cannot, like air sealing, healthy home and indoor air quality services, and crawl space encapsulation. We are proud of our certifications ranging from Weatherization Tactics to National Environmental Health Association Healthy Home Specialist. We pride ourselves on looking out for the homeowner and their best interest. We will help you to build a solution that suits your needs and budget so you can start improving your health, safety, comfort, and energy efficiency today!

In our experience helping keep homes comfortable, healthy, and efficient here on the Eastern Shore, we find it rare that dehumidifying a home will come down to a single issue with how a home is performing. Though a crawl space may be leaky and musty, there are often other issues with the overall "tightness" of a home-which we call the building envelope. Though some homes may benefit from the installation a dehumidifier under the house, at Total Home Performance we also offer whole home dehumidifiers installation to keep your home free of excess moisture, increase your overall home comfort, and reduce the risk of mold and moisture growth.

Are there areas of your home that you avoid because they have a damp or musty smell? Though moisture issues can arise in any area of the home, they most commonly crop up in the crawl space. If your crawl space or basement is damp and musty, it's important to do what you can to control moisture and prevent mold growth. As home performance and healthy home experts serving Maryland's Eastern Shore, Total Home Performance recommends scheduling mold remediation to remove existing mold, followed by crawl space or basement encapsulation for better protection against mold and moisture.

Insulation is critical to your home's comfort and to ensure you're not wasting energy and money heating and cooling your home. Spray foam insulation is unique in its ability to completely fill every gap and crack to create a highly efficient barrier that air seals and insulates your home at the same time. Total Home Performance recommends spray foam insulation as the best solution for air sealing and insulating crawl spaces and attics. Spray foam insulation has qualities that other insulating materials don't have that make it the best choice for many spaces in your home.

An unconditioned crawl space can be one of the biggest detriments to your home's comfort as well as its indoor air quality. Vented crawl spaces are subject to seasonal temperature changes that have lasting effects on the indoor atmosphere of your home. During the summer months on Maryland's Eastern Shore, as hot, humid air passes through vents into a cooler, less humid crawl space, condensation forms. This moisture leads to standing water, damage to insulation, an ideal pest habitat, and conditions that promote unhealthy mildew and mold growth.

Whether or not you realize it, your home's ductwork could be responsible for those issues you've been experiencing with home comfort, energy inefficiency, and poor indoor air quality. Your home's ductwork carries heated or cooled air from your HVAC system to your living areas. Unfortunately for the typical home, about 20% of the air moving through the ducts is lost before it reaches the kitchen, living room or bedroom. Even if it's installed properly, ductwork can shift over time and connections can come loose, leaving gaps that let your conditioned air leak out, causing your HVAC system to work harder and your utility bills to rise.

As its name implies, encapsulation contains your crawl space within your home's thermal envelope, conditioning the air inside it and keeping unwanted outside air from entering. Many crawl spaces house ductwork and plumbing which should be protected from varying outdoor temperatures. Encapsulation provides a consistent atmosphere for ductwork while making your crawl space a safer, healthier, and more energy efficient portion of your home. First, the experts at Total Home Performance will begin with a critical look at your current space.

Issues with home performance can not only cause discomfort and increase energy costs-they can also create severe structural damage that goes beyond normal crawl space repair. Luckily, Total Home Performance is here to help. Not only can we address the underlying moisture issues with crawl space encapsulation services, but we can also fix any significant structural issues in your Eastern Shore or Anne Arundel home. Whether your home has a slab foundation or pier and beam, if there is moisture damage that's affected your home's foundation, you'll want to have it addressed.

A sump pump helps keep your home dry by automatically pumping and channeling water away from the foundation. If the sump pump fails, your crawl space or basement can flood, causing expensive damage to your home and valuables. It's important to have a reliable sump pump that can help you protect your home in even the wettest weather. Total Home Performance recommends a hard-wired alarm and a battery backup sump pump. The alarm will alert you if your sump pump fails, lacks the power to pump the necessary water or if the basin fills and overflows the lid.

The mission of the MIAQ is to create healthy, productive, and environmentally sustainable indoor environments through education, communications, and advocacy. The Maine Indoor Air Quality Council is an interdisciplinary, non-profit, non-partisan collaborative of professionals of all types. Our diverse membership is comprised of physicians & nurses, engineers, architects, maintenance managers, lawyers, toxicologists, building inspectors, insurers, industrial hygienists, respiratory therapists, educators, healthy and safety professionals, legislators, public policy decision-makers, and more.

Keeping a dry and conditioned crawl space is harder than one might think, especially here in Maryland. When humid air and in-ground moisture causes damage to your crawlspace, it is essential to resolve these issues to improve the health and comfort for your home from the ground up. At Total Home Performance, we provide a full spread ofcrawl space solutions, to help keep your crawl space and your home a healthier place to live. Many of the crawl space solutions we utilize are aimed at resolving moisture damage and reducing future moisture infiltration.

A home is the largest investment many Americans make, and it is estimated that we spend 90% of our time indoors. So why wouldn't you want to spend less to stay healthy, safe, and comfortable in the space you spend most of your time in? Total Home Performance uses the latest in building science knowledge and home performance technology to help Eastern Shore's homeowners reduce their energy bills, while keeping their homes comfortable all year round. When was the last time you considered the state of your home insulation, or took note of how many air leaks there were in your home's construction and ductwork?

Fluctuating indoor temperatures, high utility bills, constantly running heating and cooling equipment - these are all signs that your house is under-insulated. As you seek to improve the insulation in your home, one of the first places you should start is the exterior walls. Total Home Performance offers comprehensive wall insulation services for homes along Maryland's Eastern Shore. We can install high performance insulation in your existing walls with minimal impact on your walls. Without proper wall insulation, outside temperatures have a greater influence on your indoor comfort.

Air sealing stops unwanted outside air from entering your home for more consistent temperatures, improved air quality and home energy savings. All homes should be air sealed to make them more comfortable and energy efficient. Air sealing reduces drafts in uncomfortable rooms, helps your home maintain conditioned air and cuts down on dust, pollen and other air particulates coming into your living space from outside or from the crawl space. Air sealing helps stop musty odors, moisture and pests from entering your home through the crawl space.

Attic insulation plays an essential role in preventing heat transfer so that your home stays warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Properly insulating your attic not only improves comfort and indoor air quality, but it also reduces heating and cooling costs. Without insulation, your attic allows heat to pass freely into and out of your living space. That heat, particularly along Maryland's Eastern Shore, can be truly scorching and humid in the summer, and moist and freezing in the winter. So if your home is too hot during the summer and too cold in the winter, your attic likely needs to have insulation installed.