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Tales of Inspecting
February 5, 2009 by David Helm · 2 Comments
I know that many home inspectors have stories (some of them horror) of inspections that did not go exactly as planned. I have heard one story about a very dangerous person, with gun, that happened to be in the house. My own little story is nowhere near as nasty as that one, but it had me worried for a bit. I always save the crawl space for last. It is a dirty place and I don’t wish to take any of the dirt back into the home. This particular day, my client was in California, the realtor came to open the house and left, so I was alone at the site. The crawl space was a particularly tight one, but one I could traverse with some effort. As I was coming down the home stretch, so to speak, I came to an area that had flexible duct work that was pretty close to the ground. Since I needed to see some plumbing nearby, I decided that I could probably push my way under this duct (after all, it was flexible). I got about halfway through when I found that I could not make it any further. Okay I think, I’ll just back out from under it. WRONG! Here I am, stuck in a crawl space, my cell phone is in my tool bag outside the entry. I can’t move forward, backward or sideways. What a predicament! After struggling for a good 5 minutes (seemed like hours), I figured I needed to stop, relax and think this through. I wear heavy duty rain gear in crawl spaces. First thing I did was remove the rain coat; it felt like I could move a little, but not enough. It was winter, so I had a fairly heavy shirt on; removed it. Now I am naked from the waste up and feeling really ridiculous. My next move was to very slowly inch my way backward. After about 5 minutes of this I was free. Put my shirt and raincoat back on and went the long way to get out. While laying there thinking what to do, I was seeing the headlines: “Home Inspector found dead lodged in crawl space!” What a time!
Thanks for reading.
David Helm, Bellingham home inspector
I could see how this would happen. At least you didn’t have to call out for help… For me that would have been the worst.
Glenn
Glenn, Calling out may not have brought any help. It was a farmhouse and not near any neighbors. I try to limit the tools I take into the crawlspace because it is easy to leave some behind; and hard to find those left behind. The cell phone always stays outside because if I lost it I would be lost.