ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Crawl Spaces

I was working construction one year where an electrician had to haul a large transformer unit through a blazingly hot attic. Just like Tumpy said about plumbers, the furnace guy's ran the duct work right through the one place the electricain needed to get through so he could get to the other side.

One thing that i like about crawl spaces is all the old stuff that one can find, Old beer cans, bottles, cups from local fast food places, old newspaper from 40s, 50s ..., I have yet to find anything that has value, like old 100 bills :):)

One time i found a pure body of a dead rat, it seemed like it was mummified, this may sound nasty but it was beautiful, i brought out to show to the customer. She got excited about it and kept it to show to her nephew.

This thread's comments bring back a rather funny fire call we had here about 5-6 years back.

A plumber and his apprentice were working in the crawl space of a house not that far from here actually, the plumber fed a length of PVC sewer line into the crawl space, via a vent in the concrete foundations of the house, which the apprentice them primed, glued and asked the plumber to push the pipe into the other end of the elbow they had previously installed.

It was about this time that the apprentice realised he was trapped between the bottom of the pipe and the ground under him, with the pipe touching the underside of the floor joists he couldn't move an inch either way.

The plumber was not willing to cut the pipe (an 8" sewer line), he rang the Fire Brigade, the guy might have wished he had just cut the pipe, as there is a couple of electricians in the brigade here.

I'll never forget what the officer in charge (an electrician) said when he looked under the floor to see an apprentice who was obviously in tears.

"Hmm, what are the means of this?"

He yelled out to us, who were near the manhole (in front of the plumber, of course).
"What is the current hourly rate for the hire of a shovel and for someone to use it?"

I said "$172 +GST, I believe"

Plumber said "I'm NOT paying that!"

The OIC said "Well we could do you a really good saw for $45/hour +GST, it's nice, we've just painted it, it's pretty"

Long story short, we dug the young fella out, much to his relief, one of our guys banged his head getting out of the man-hole, trying to avoid, you guessed it, another plumbers drain line.

BTW, no money did change hands.

Since going out on my own I have practically lived in crawl spaces, be it above the ceiling or below the floor. Just finished an attic job a few minutes ago actually though there's nothing to report on that one. (pause to scratch)

All of the usual sweat, blood, tears, and profanity ( not always in that order, but usually) apply of course.

The worst two that come to mind are under the houses.

First runner up had me learning much about the territorial habits of Black Widows and breathing a lot of bug spray.
Doing a complete re-wire of and small old house that was completely loaded with colonies of Black Widows underneath. I would nuke a colony (so as to approach, drill up and shove a wire up) only to find a competing colony in place at my next up-hole. This is right after speaking with an HVAC installer who told me about how he was bitten by a Black Widow in the face and how it took a year or so to regain natural facial expressions.

The winner is----

I was hired to re run some RG6 in a house that was being spruced up for a flip. I took a quick look in the access hole and said "no problem".
After planning my strategy for minimal in and out trips to get to and from where I needed to go, I entered the crawl space. The height of the space was such that outright crawling wasn't possible. Only the boot camp, crawl under the wire while they shoot live rounds over your head technique was possible, with the occasional drop to your belly and go under the plumbing moves thrown in of course.

This would have been routine if it were not for the ground. It was like a dried out lake bed from a National Geographic photo. Hard clay with sharp edged crevices and some embedded rocks for variety.
Shortly after entering I realized this was going to hurt. I have never tried to pull my fat arse across anything that caused me more pain that that stuff. Making matters worse was the fact that the house had been built on system of very sound footers. The kind that turn crawling to your probe more like finding the cheese in a maze. To go from one point to another (could only be 5' as the crow crawls) involved crawling all the way around these blockades.
I was experimenting with new crawling techniques like "The Sidewinder" (lying on my side and pulling myself along to give the pressure points on my knees a rest)before it was done.

This job would have taken maybe 3 hours at most, probably less, if I could have got up on my knees and boogied, but ended up taking 6 and left me totaled at the end. My knees, elbows and palms were sore to the touch and muscles groups I didn't know I had were commanding respect.

So isn't a crawl space story but it is almost as good. I had to go repair a city well water pump motor. There was a small pump house out near a swamp which fed water to about 100 houses. The pump wasn't working and the people were counting on me to get the pump running again. I get there, unlock the door open it up and look inside. It was dark, damp with 1 light bulb working. I shine my flashlight into the area and see the service panel on the opposite end of where I enter the building. Then I look at the wall. It looked weird, the wall seemed to be moving. It was covered with those cave crickets. I tried to walk slowly past them to get to the service panel, but to no luck. They all start to move and jump. They were all over me, in my shirt, down my pants, etc. I run out of the building and drop pants to get the critters out. Luckily I am out in a swamp with no one around. Now I had to get the pump working , so I try again. I spray room with bee spray, use duct tape to close up every opening you could think of, shirt sleeves, pant cuffs, waist, etc. Put on a big hat and scarf cloth ( This was summer too). I head in the building. They are jumping all around the place, bouncing off me and my equipment, etc. I finally get everything working and get the heck out of there, as soon as I could. Went home for a nice hot shower!

Went to a repeater (ham radio) site on to of a 12 story bldg in a town east of Houston TX. There were a few wasp flying around the door to the radio room that was accessed from the roof. Open the door and there were hundreds of active wasp nest inside. Left and went to the store and got 2 bug bombs. Opened the door and thru the bombs in and shut it. After less than an hour the floor of the room was almost totally covered with dead wasps. There were still quite a few outside flying around which we would spray with wasp spray. Managed to install a link radio and antenna and not one sting! Robert

Last summer I spent the better part of an entire month inside hollow wall chases. The job was for a major university in providence. they had brand new buildings built for dormitories. however all the end rooms were cold in the winter due to poor layout of the hvac system. their solution was to install electric basboards in each of the end units of the buildings. there were 4 end units in each 3 story building. needless to say they did not want to have to patch a buch of holes for these heaters to be snaked in. the solution was a chace on both ends of the building which was just a void 1 stud bay wide by about 6 feet long. my task was simple, cut an access hole large unough for myself on the 3rd flr. get inside said chase smash through 1" or so of floor leveling cement, then cut through the plywood sub floor. then i had to shimmy through this hatch and wedge myself in and slide down to the next landing and repeat. to access the bottom level. at each level someone would be on the inside of the dorm rooms drilling a hole and feeding in a 12-2 nm cable. after i had snagged 6 cables for home runs to the electric panel I would work my way back up the chase to the attic and pass the cables off to another guy who ran the the length of the attic, where in turn the would drop down the mirrored chase to the electric closet. this may not sound too terrible but It was the middle of august and rather warm, and we had to be done for the incoming students in september. after all that demo of the floor i had to go back in and re fire stop all penetrations not fun either. I got a nice that a boy for my efforts too!! as soon as the economy rebounds you can bet this job will come up at my review...