When was the last time you vacuumed your crawlspace?

[FeistyKat]

I had to crawl under the house the other day for a few minutes, I HATE going under the house, it's absolutely toxic with dust & I have a bushy beard which means a respirator doesn't do squat. And all I had was an N95 mask from the gubmint, which is even more useless.

I have a fair amount of work to do under there, including working with insulation & I'm looking at buying a Powered Air Purifying Respirator so I don't die:

If I had it to do again, I would have vacuumed all that dirt out while the footings were curing. Or put a bloody basement in.

I was thinking I could take my wet/dry vac & replace the filter with another hose that would snake outside the crawlspace & actually vacuum all the dirt out. I wonder how many new wet/dry vacuums I would go through?

[JRinFL]

When I was growing up in California, all the crawlspaces were dirt on the bottom. You could vacuum all year long and still never run out of dirt. They made for an unpleasant work environment, for sure.

[ChrisinHove]

They’re usually much shallower here, typically under a foot in depth. When I was 5 or 6, the ol’ man rewired the family home, and would get me to crawl under the floor to help route the cables.

Better than having to go up the chimney, I suppose.

[FeistyKat]

When I was growing up in California, all the crawlspaces were dirt on the bottom. You could vacuum all year long and still never run out of dirt. They made for an unpleasant work environment, for sure.

There's definitely a hard layer, but it's covered by 1, maybe 2 inches of powder.

I'm going to buy a 24" fan that pushes around 8,000CFM & place that in the crawlspace hole pointing out when I'm working under there.

Maybe after a few years of working down there all the dirt will be gone.

[cabfrank]

Watch out for Black Widows.

[yablanowitz]

Maybe after a few years of working down there all the dirt will be gone.

Dream on. If you ever run out, let me know and I'll send more your way. We have an infinite supply.

[RustyIron]

Wah! Wah!

There's dirt and Spyders under the house! It's dark! I'm scared!

A couple weeks ago we were faced with a plumbing dilemma. Half the house is on a slab, the other half is on a raised footing. The job required someone under the house, and someone on the outside. Here's a shot of Mrs. Iron from my vantage point inside the house.

[FeistyKat]

Watch out for Black Widows.

I saw a few outside this Summer & 1 in the garage. My weapon of choice is my propane torch when possible, but more often than not it's a can of "air" for dusting keyboards. Turn the can upside down & freeze them with the refrigerant.

Something I WAS worried about was finding 20 or 30 rattlesnakes nesting under the house (which I still haven't ruled out, it's a maze of stem walls under there & I only breached the west half of the house the other night.)

I'm still traumatized from a Reader's Digest article I read as a youth about someone who bought a house with a basement infested with rattlesnakes and ended up going in the basement with a .22 rifle to kill the snakes. A prime candidate for the Darwin Awards, if you ask me. Not from the snakes, from killing himself with a richochet.

Hmm, the unexplored east side, perhaps I'll ask ol' RustyIron to bring his pistol down to help me clear the east side of the house. He's only a few hours north of me.

Wah! Wah!

There's dirt and Spyders under the house! It's dark! I'm scared!

A couple weeks ago we were faced with a plumbing dilemma. Half the house is on a slab, the other half is on a raised footing. The job required someone under the house, and someone on the outside. Here's a shot of Mrs. Iron from my vantage point inside the house.


IMG_8354.jpeg

What a woman!

I haven't seen any black widows under the house, ever, or any other spiders, oddly, but LOTS of rat turds, and under the stairs going down to the garage they've collected a MASSIVE amount of stuff from the garage. I finally found those Nyloc nuts I've been looking for the last 15 years, still in the orange plastic bag. A plethora of milk bottle caps & other assorted stuff. I'm not sure where the hole is but one of my projects is to sift out all the rat crap, I imagine I'll find it then.

You know that's a really good picture & I don't see a lot of dust in the air. Is Mrs. Iron a delicate crawler, or do you just have heavier dirt up there?

And however did you manage to convince her she needed to be the one under the house?

[FeistyKat]

Wah! Wah!

There's dirt and Spyders under the house! It's dark! I'm scared!

A couple weeks ago we were faced with a plumbing dilemma. Half the house is on a slab, the other half is on a raised footing. The job required someone under the house, and someone on the outside. Here's a shot of Mrs. Iron from my vantage point inside the house.


IMG_8354.jpeg

What is that water filter-looking-thing if front of your wife, to her right?

And, gasp, that light! Do you run Ryobi?

[RustyIron]

What a woman!

True, but I'm smarter.
I chose her, and she chose me.

And however did you manage to convince her she needed to be the one under the house?

Well... it was her idea. To summarize, there was a drain line clog under the slab, and a rusted out cast iron fitting before the slab. She chopped out a section of pipe which included a tee and an elbow, recreated it in ABS, and then stuck installed it in place of the old pipes.

I was "incapacitated" at the time, having suffered a rather dramatic mountain biking incident. Before it was over, I did have to end up dragging myself under the house, but we got it all fixed.

What is that water filter-looking-thing if front of your wife, to her right?
And, gasp, that light! Do you run Ryobi?

That's right underneath my chair in the dining room... and it looks like... DYNAMITE!
Oh... wait... it IS a water filter. Our refrigerator is built-in, so I put the water filter under the house.

Good eye on the Ryobi light.
It blazes forth like a thousand suns.