I Heart Crawl Spaces

Where I do inspections, I have the great joy of going into a lot of crawl spaces. People think I'm joking when I say that I "save the best for last" but I really do like the crawls. I have only been stuck six or seven times, but have gotten out okay.

Some of the crawls are what I call "belly-crawlers", where you never get onto your hands and knees. On the other extreme is the "cathedral", where the house is built on a hill-side and one end of the crawl is hands-and-knees low, but the other is so tall you need a ladder to pull insulation around the perimeter and plumbing penetrations.

One of the most common questions I get is, "Do you see a lot of snakes? To be honest, I don't see so many snakes as snake skins (where snakes have been and shed their skins).

That can be a little spooky, because you know the snake has been there but not when and not if it is still there. I can live with the snakes and the spiders (yeah, I see LOTS of those too).

What I really don't like is when I start finding evidence of warm-blooded animal life - namely cats. Now I like cats, but when a cat (or cats) get into a crawl space, they usually pick an area for the litter box and it's rarely a nice isolated corner.  It's worse than low-crawling through the minefield in Fort Benning.  What is even more obnoxious is when you run into an animal that has expired.

They can spook you too; especially if you are lucky enough to be in a "belly-crawler" and you come around a corner or support pier and meet the dead animal face to face. That can get your heart to racing. But, luckily, only for a while. Then you move back a few feet, take a picture, make note of its location, then continue on with the inspection.