His description sounds like a wolf spider. They're fast, but interesting.

I called the local organic gardening guy on his program one Sunday morning (on a local radio talk show) and asked how to keep the tarantulas outside. He said that cedar mulch is reputed to repel spiders. So you might want to find a few bags and simply run a 12-24 inch strip of it around the house foundation to see if that works. I think it has here. I can find their spider holes in the yard easily enough, but I've only had to catch one in the house this year and none last year (and this year's got in by a fluke, under the bottom of a screen door when the main door was left open for a while).

SRS