the_linda•3mo agoOG Member

Spent three hours on a crawl space that should have taken twenty minutes

Had a job yesterday where the old coax was stapled down every six inches across the whole floor joist run. It was a full crawl space, maybe two feet high at best. The customer wanted the new line run the same path, but pulling the old one out was impossible. Ended up cutting it into a dozen pieces and fishing each section back through the joists. My back is killing me from that hunched over work. What's the worst hidden mess you've found in an attic or crawl space?

4 comments

4 Comments

betty_wells3mo agoMost Upvoted

Why would a customer insist on the same path when the old install was clearly a nightmare? That just sets you up for the same pain all over again. Did you try to talk them out of it?

mason_fisher3mo ago

Could it be they just don't trust a new route? Sometimes customers fixate on the devil they know, even if it's a dusty, awful devil.

tarabell1mo ago

Thought about snaking a new line beside the old one and leaving the old one buried. Sometimes you just gotta work smarter, not harder.

jade5173mo ago

Yeah, about customers wanting the same path. My buddy had a crawl space job where the old wire was buried under years of blown-in insulation. They wanted the new line run identical, but pulling it just dragged a ton of that dusty mess down with it. He said it was like digging through a gray snowdrift full of spider webs and mouse droppings for hours. He came out looking like a ghost and coughing for a week.