Everett Crawl Space Repair

The Census decade counts show Everett’s two booms plainly: 7,437 housing units from before 1940, then 2,135 from the 1940s, 3,599 from the 1950s, 4,399 from the 1960s and 5,373 from the 1970s, before 7,544 in the 1980s and 7,037 in the 1990s. 20.1% of the city’s housing predates 1950, the third-highest share of the nineteen after Seattle and Burien.

The two stocks need different inspections. Under a house built before 1940, the first questions are whether a ground cover was ever laid, how much clearance there is to work in, and what the framing sits on: posts set on the soil or on small footings, sills close to the ground, and beams that may have been patched over the decades. Old pipe and duct wrap deserves care before anyone disturbs it; asbestos in a crawl space covers what to check. Under a house from the 1980s or 1990s, the materials it was built with are probably still there, and the question is whether they have held: a ground cover still continuous, insulation still in place, vents still open.

Read the city-wide soil figures with one caveat. Everett’s Census boundary is five separate polygons, and a detached part of it lies in ZIP code 98272 and inside a different soil survey area, the one for the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. That land is counted in Everett’s figures. One soil association mapped in that survey area, rated well drained, covers 3.2% of the city’s mapped area on its own, so the city-wide shares are not quite the shares for the main city.

The rest is mapped in one survey area. Alderwood-Urban land complex on 2 to 8 percent slopes is the largest map unit at 36.2%, Urban land on its own covers 11.0%, and map units of open water another 5.6%, which is most of why 17.7% of the mapped area is unrated. 10.3% falls in the wetter classes, and the largest wet-rated unit is Puget silty clay loam (4.9%), rated poorly drained. Steep ground is mapped too: Alderwood-Everett gravelly sandy loams on 25 to 70 percent slopes cover 7.2% and Alderwood gravelly sandy loam on 15 to 30 percent slopes 4.9%. (The “Everett” in some soil names is a soil series, not the city.)

No geologic or landslide study naming Everett turned up in this site’s research, so the soil map is the only ground record here, and it maps units, not lots. A silty clay loam rated poorly drained holds water; a steep unit raises the question of where drained water goes. Which one a house sits on is found by looking, ideally after a wet week. Water in a crawl space after rain sets out the checks.

The Everett airport station is 5.8 miles from Everett’s Census internal point, and its 1991–2020 annual normal, 33.37 inches, is the lowest of the eight stations this site publishes. It also has the fewest days a year with an inch of rain or more, 2.5. A station called simply “Everett” sits 0.7 miles from the internal point, but it has only 13 years of record behind its annual figure, short of the 20 the dataset requires, so it is left out.

The only other station within 15 miles is Monroe, 12.3 miles away, with 50.77 inches, which gives Everett a 17.4-inch spread from just two gauges. The dataset therefore gives Everett no rain figure; the airport record is the closest, and Monroe shows how much wetter a gauge a dozen miles away can be.

For cold, the airport averages 28.8 nights a year at or below freezing and 2.1 days a year when the temperature never rises above freezing, the second most of the eight published stations after Monroe’s 3. A day that stays below freezing is harder on exposed pipes than a cold night, so in an older Everett crawl space with water lines near the vents, check the pipe insulation before winter. Frozen pipes in a crawl space covers how.

Inside Everett, permits come from Permit Services in the Public Works department, through the city’s online permitting portal, and Everett runs its own electrical permitting, so a new circuit for a sump pump is a city permit. This site has not read which crawl space work Everett exempts from a building permit; ask Permit Services.

Most Everett ZIP codes reach well past the city. 98203 covers 35.6% of Everett’s land and lies entirely inside it, as does the small 98207. But only 44.1% of 98201’s land, 43.0% of 98204’s and 30.8% of 98208’s is inside the city, so an Everett mailing address in any of those three may be outside it. In unincorporated Snohomish County, building permits come from the county’s Planning and Development Services and electrical permits from L&I. The detached piece of the city in 98272 is not listed on this page.

The Department of Revenue lists Everett at 9.9% for October 1 to December 31, 2026, the lowest rate of the nineteen places, and a part of the city outside the regional transit district at 8.5%. The rate follows the address and applies to the whole contract price, and the cost guide’s ranges are before it.