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...
