Spent 4 hours on a crawl space that should have taken 45 minutes

Got a call for a new drop in a house built in the 80s. The crawl space looked normal from the hatch, but once I got in there, it was a solid wall of old, blown-in insulation. I mean, it was like a gray snowdrift, three feet deep in places. Had to dig a trench with my hands and a piece of scrap wood just to find the sill plate to run the line. Every time I moved, more of the stuff would collapse into the path I just made. My fish tape kept getting buried. The homeowner thought I was crazy when I came up for air covered head to toe in dust. What should have been a simple pull turned into a full afternoon of fighting that mess. What's the best way you guys deal with a packed insulation crawl space without wrecking the stuff?

2 comments

2 Comments

robin83615h ago

Man, that stuff is the worst, you gotta just suit up and push it aside.

elizabeth_gonzalez14h agoMost Upvoted

Seriously? It's not like we're dealing with toxic waste. What even is "that stuff"? Sometimes you can just ignore it and it goes away on its own.