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I was in an attic one time, where all the pink insulation was torn off the paper backing by a family of squirrels. They must of used it for insulation to make a nest for the winter. The attic had a lot of squirrel ----
all over the place. Luckily, I didn't have to do too much up there. I couldn't believe what they did to the insultion.

What about fiberglass insulation thoroughly saturated with liquid and solid forms of cat, rodent and pigeon excreta?

hbiss and bjarney

What's really nasty is not just the creepy crawly roaches. It's the DUNG they leave behind. That stuff COATS everything and does it SMELL!!!!

It looks like a hazy sticky deposit with little brown dots (the size of sand grains).

I'm sure that if you've ever worked in a trash compactor room, big-city basement or even on some old broken appliance, television, recordplayer or radio set that was brought in for repair (like the portable my aunt asked me to look at), you're familiar with that god-forsaken STENCH. The minute I lifted the lid of the CD player section it came wafting out.

Wound up tossing the whole thing into a plastic bag and dropkicking it into a garbage can outside. GAG!


[This message has been edited by SvenNYC (edited 12-16-2003).]

Whats always fun is the attics with blown in insulation, its like there is 6 inches of snow up there, makes finding the joists a lot of fun... only fell thru the attic once, I ended up inside an empty closet with no knob on the inside and to top it off I got clocked with my mag lite once I hit the floor. But I will still take an attic over a nasty dank crawl space anyday... My father did residential alarm installs for about 15 years and he said that he can't remember how many tools he left in a crawlspace that it just wasn't worth it to slither back thru to retrieve them.

That Blown-in stuff is bad.

My worst experience with that was in an attic that was about 12 inches high at the peak. I had to shimmy across to bring a wire from a switch to a new fan location. After going across the full length of the attic my flashlight (in my teeth) caught the glow of 2 eyes in the corner where I had to go!

I think it was a Squirrel, but didn't wait to find out. I backed out as quickly as I could and brought like a Garbage can worth of insulation down the scuttle hole with me. What a mess!

Bill

LMAO,Bill, I hear you...it ain't easy...so why do plumbers make out better than us..? it ain't fair...you don't see them crawling around,swiiming thru insulation and vermin detritus...

Hey AtticRat,come with me sometime and we'll change out a sewer pump. Plumbing ain't all fun.

Attic Rat,

No, I've worked some with a Plumber. Not a lot, but enough to know that I'd rather be in the crawlspace with the Slugs.


Bill

... I was only funnin'...every trade has its ups and downs...I actually worked as a plumbers aide myself....but i got all the grunt work...sewer traps, stinky toilet clogs.....ycccck!!

About a year ago I'm in this crawl space where there had been a broken sewage pipe. When the plumber makes the repair he puts down about 500 pounds of lime to neutralize the odor. The dryer is also vented under the house. I have to replace the circuit to the sewer pump so here I go on hands and knees through the sewage, lime and dryer lint. I'm saying to myself It can't get much worse than this. Those 120 degree attics look pretty good then.