I can remember many years ago, doing a major renovation on an old house, you know the jobs we love to hate, removing all the old galvanised pipework because it is totally blocked up and there is no water getting through the pipe work and replacing it with plastic.
This particular house didn’t have a lot of crawl space underneath so I decided to start with the pipework that I had easy access to. Completed that part without any drama, the next pipe run was over to where the hot water cylinder was located except the problem I couldn’t get to it because the crawl space was only 200mm between the ground and the floor joists. Out comes the spade and I proceeded to dig myself a trench to where I had to go. Trench was dug, and I was pretty pleased with the outcome, and I was sure I had enough room to do what needed to be done. So I proceeded with my tools and the pipe along the trench – I got to within a few feet of where I had to go and then the clearance seemed to get smaller – not a problem I thought, so I just pushed myself under the floor joist (I was lying on my back in the dirt and cobwebs).Once I was in the right position near the hot water cylinder inlet, I realised that I was stuck and couldn’t get back out. No problem I would work it out later.
So I proceeded to make the connections, and continue the job. I was feeling around with my hand trying to locate a pair of pliers which I needed to tighten the connection and I felt my hand touch something which was not human – I pulled it towards me to find out what it was. OMG it was a very dead decomposed RAT!!
This added a bit of drama to my situation and I was not to happy about my predicament. I lay there for about five minutes wondering how I was going to get out. I heard footsteps on the floor above me and called out. It was my electrician coming to check the hot water cylinder.
After an embarassing conversation with the electrician which went along the lines of:
“What are you doing under there?”
“Are you stuck? Do you need a hand to get out?”
With much laughing and teasing, he crawled under the house and managed to pull me out feet first from my trench under the house.
So I was saved by the electrician, the one thing I learnt from that experience was make the trench deeper or get the young apprentice to crawl under houses!
Mark
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