Jeannie Gets a Gold Star
Well actually, Jeannie got the "hero" award and a gold star for hardest worker, all in one day...
After getting started last week, Saturday we finished off packing up all of the rolled pink insulation and most of the original sawdust and tarpaper beneath that.
Why does Jeannie get both the gold star and the hero award? Well...
While I stayed below double-bagging and hauling out the insulation, she was up there crawling around in places on her stomach where my 6'7" frame would never fit. Nobody should ever be expected to do this. It's dirty, disgusting work.
While it was very rewarding to get 37 bags of insulation packed up, there was one setback. (Isn't there always one!?) In the narrowest crawlspace, over the master bedroom, she found what seems to be loose, disintegrated organic matter...dusty beige and the consistency of baby powder. It fills 2-4 inches between each rafter. While we've been able to scoop out the pink insulation in clumps and roll the sawdust/tarpaper up, this stuff just runs through her fingers.
We picked up a mini shop-vac with a 18' hose and HEPA filter that could reach the corners. However, the tube was too small and clogged up regularly. At this point we're trying to figure out a way to get the larger shop-vac up there--it has a larger tube and stronger motor which would hopefully do the trick.
Any and all suggestions are welcome! :-)
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Comments
Thanks, A, for posting these lovely pics. I feel pretty. Yep.
Posted by: jmo | April 12, 2004 7:26 PM
I spent half of my summer vacation doing the exact same thing. Our fiberglass insulation was only 30 years old but at one point it was home to some critters, most likely raccoons.
We had the same problem in that our shop vac could not reach the end of the rafters. We ended up buying a hose extentsion kit (20 ft) and jury rigging a platform for the shopvac to sit on (two ladders and some 2 X 4's). The shop vac was raised on the platform to just under the ceiling and the 25 ft of hose was long enough to reach the corners.
Not sure if this will help or not but I thought I would pass it along.
Posted by: Maddy | April 13, 2004 3:39 PM
Help? Help? Maddy, that's MORE than help! That is an absolutely BRILLIANT idea. Especially raising the vac to the ceiling of the floor below. It wouldn't fit through the rafters (too close together) so we thought, "Oh well..."
That, and my sister's idea about putting panty hose over the HEPA Wet/Dry vac filter so it doesn't clog up so quickly with the heavier stuff.
Now, we'll get this stuff tested first. If it comes back negative, I am vacuuming out that attic!
Posted by: jmo | April 13, 2004 10:24 PM
Sounds like this stuff could be vermiculite. Not sure what to make of it. There are many different opinions on it.
Tim
Posted by: Tim C. | April 15, 2004 9:17 AM
Tim--
Someone else mentioned vermiculite (nasty stuff) so I had someone else familiar with vermiculite check it. It's too fine a powder to be the vermiculite he's familiar with (he unknowingly put it in his house in the 60's...before all of the informatiom about the Libby mine.)
I did some research on vermiculite and saw photographs of the granuales as well as got the story on the Libby Mine. However, it is posted at http://www.vermiculite.com so consider the source :)
Posted by: jmo | April 15, 2004 10:18 AM