Crawling Around Crawlspace

I can’t believe I managed to crawl around under the house today!  You see, I don’t do well with creepy crawly creatures and I usually scream upon reptile sighting, even at a distance.  Fortunately, I did not see anything today that got my heart racing.  Phew….

Since I don’t have one of those jumper suits for crawling around dirty spaces I wore my mud-stained hiking clothes and made sure that my 20″ hair was tucked nicely inside the shirt.  I put an old baseball cap on my head, backwards, and strapped on my halogen headlamp.  With a camera in my hand, I stuck my head into the opening on the south end of the house.  The opening is certainly big enough for an adult male to crawl through so I had no problems getting in and maneuvering around.  Once I got over the large pipes I found that I could actually crawl on all fours instead of slithering around.  The clay soil was slightly moist but not wet.  I took pictures — first west, north and east walls then I crawled towards the center of the house where remains of a brick fireplace was under the kitchen.

There are 4 columns of 10 posts running north-south direction.  I saw knob and tube wiring, old floor furnace and galvanized steel piping.  These are all the stuff we saw on the home inspection report when we bought the house and intended to replace them so it wasn’t surprising.

Here are some pictures under the house:

Water wicking up from the soil through concrete to wood

Remnants of chimney

Old pipes

Knob and tube wiring