Crawl space spray foam insulation in Didsbury is common work, because houses of this age here have usually been added to at least once and the addition rarely got the same foundation as the original.
Half a basement and half a crawl space under one house
This is the arrangement more often than not. The original part of the house sits over a proper cellar and a later kitchen, porch or back bedroom sits over a shallow crawl with a much lighter foundation under it. The two spaces are open to each other, they are at different temperatures, and the floor over the crawl is the one the household complains about. Any sensible plan for a Didsbury house like this treats them as one system, because air moves freely between them and heating one does nothing while the other is open to the ground.
The dirt floor is the moisture source and it comes first
Most of these have bare earth underneath. Ground gives up water continuously, and in a closed space that water has nowhere to go except into the timber above it and into the air of the house, because air moves upward out of a crawl space and into the rooms above all winter. Laying a sealed ground cover is the first move and it is not optional. Insulating a crawl space that is still open to soil is how a dry problem becomes a rot problem.
Why sealing the perimeter beats insulating the floor above
The instinct is to insulate between the floor joists and leave the crawl outside the heated house. It performs poorly, because the pipes and ducts stay in the cold, the batts fall out over time, and the perimeter vents keep feeding damp air in. Bringing the crawl inside the envelope by sealing and insulating the perimeter walls instead puts the services in conditioned space, dries the whole thing out, and is generally the cheaper of the two once the ground cover is there anyway.
The cheapest correct version of this job
Where money is tight, and in this town it usually is, the order that gets the most is a sealed ground cover, then the rim and the top of the perimeter wall, then the rest of the wall when it can be afforded. Foam in a Didsbury crawl space that a person can enter needs covering with a thermal barrier or, at minimum, the ignition barrier the space calls for, so that is priced in rather than discovered later. More on thermal barrier vs ignition barrier.
Crawl Space Spray Foam Insulation Didsbury: Common Questions
Why is the floor over the back addition freezing? That is the crawl space, and usually it is open to the ground and to the cellar both.
Should the vents stay open? No. The approach that works seals the crawl and brings it inside the envelope.
What comes first if we can only do one thing? A sealed ground cover. Insulating over bare soil makes things worse.
Size the assembly with the R-value calculator, then get a free Didsbury quote. More on Crawl Space Spray Foam Insulation Alberta.