We’ve had flooding two years in a row and this situation seems to be our new normal. So far, our house has only had minor impacts and we continue to make changes and improvements to try to mitigate against future floods.

My question today is about finding a new, fire-coded covering for the ICF foundations walls in our crawl space. The 1-2 inches of water that seeped into our crawl space (sump pump wasn’t quite able to keep up) caused the entire bottom 2 feet of drywall to mold. We removed all of the moldy drywall and now we’re considering what to install next.

There are no gas appliances in our house and therefore no combustibles in the crawl space. But fire code still requires that the ICF be covered with something. The two options we have thought about are:

– Concrete board, which wouldn’t mold after a flood. But would the ICF behind it mold?
– Leave the bottom 2 feet uncovered, which is not to code but given we have no combustibles in the crawl space, maybe not a big deal?

I’d appreciate your thoughts on these options or any other suggestions you might have.