Question about a crawl space job in Phoenix that made me rethink my whole approach

I was under a house in 115 degree heat, trying to fish a line through a tight spot. The homeowner said 'just leave it, it's fine' but I knew it would fail. I pushed through and found a whole nest of chewed up old wires. Now I never skip a crawl space check, no matter what. How do you guys handle it when a customer wants you to cut corners?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_tara2mo ago

Man, I've definitely been the guy who almost cut the corner. Remember one time I was so beat from the heat I almost agreed to skip checking a vent line. Good thing my gut said no, because it was totally blocked by a family of... well, let's just say very large bugs. Now I'm that annoying tech who takes forever under there, but hey, at least I sleep at night.

the_xena2mo ago

That crawl space story is a perfect example of a bigger thing. People often want the easy fix now, but it just pushes the real problem down the road. Doing it right the first time is almost always the shortcut.

allen.william26d ago

Happened to me just last month. The homeowner tried to talk me into patching a little section of ductwork instead of replacing the whole run. Said it looked fine from the attic access. I went ahead and pulled the old stuff out anyway and found the whole thing was basically glued together with years of dust and moisture. Saved them from a total system failure in the middle of summer. You just can't trust what you can't see firsthand.