Your Crawlspace Guys

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Weekend warriors home improvement show, built by bar lumber. When it comes to big or small projects around the home, Tony and Cory have got the know how and the answers to make your life just a bit easier. Here they are, your weekend warriors, Tony and Cory. [00:00:25] Speaker B: Hey, welcome to the Weeknd warriors home improvement show, built by par lumber. I'm Cory Valdez. [00:00:30] Speaker C: And I'm Tony Cookston. [00:00:31] Speaker B: Thanks for tuning in in with us today. We've got another great show lined up for you, Tony. We have one of your customers that patrons the par Newburg store all the time. Why don't you introduce who we've got in the studio with us? [00:00:43] Speaker C: We certainly will. We have got Larry O'Halloran with your crawl space guys. How you doing, Larry? [00:00:49] Speaker D: I'm doing well, thank you. [00:00:50] Speaker C: Good. It's good to have you on the show. We, of course, know each other for a while, and so we see each other at the store store regularly. And, you know, for a long time, I used to just say, he's that really happy guy, you know, the really happy guy that smiles a lot. And people were like, oh, yeah, I know the guy with the smile. Yeah. So that's kind of how you were. And then we got to know each other better, and then now you're just Larry. [00:01:12] Speaker D: Well, I appreciate that. Thank you. [00:01:13] Speaker B: Just Larry. [00:01:15] Speaker C: Just now you're just Larry. But we saw an opportunity. You really saw an opportunity. You said to me, hey, we talked before about talking about the crawl space and the things that go on down there and the fact that nobody ever wants to go down there and do what needs to be done. It's a crazy, crazy thing we should talk about on the radio. And you're right. We do need to talk about it on the radio. And that day is today. [00:01:39] Speaker D: Yes. Well, we love crawl spaces. Most people hate them, and we love them. [00:01:44] Speaker B: I'll tell you who hates them the most. [00:01:46] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:01:47] Speaker B: Home inspectors. [00:01:48] Speaker C: Oh, clearly. [00:01:49] Speaker B: I swear, home inspectors will not go down in crawl spaces. It drives me crazy. [00:01:53] Speaker D: Well, I'll tell you something about that. You know, a lot of times, I shouldn't say a lot. Occasionally, we will have a homeowner that says, well, our home inspector couldn't get in the crawl space. So when we first would hear this, we'd be like, oh, okay. Must be horrible down there. And then we go down there and seems quite normal to us. And we said, was he really big? No, but anyway, you know, they don't. But most of them are. Most of them do go in there, but sometimes they get frightened or they think they can't get over heat duct. And they. And so we go in there and we usually get through. [00:02:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, you have to be able to. I mean, that's the reason they build crawl spaces the way they do, so that you could access it. [00:02:31] Speaker C: Yeah. It's not a walk space or a jaw. [00:02:33] Speaker D: Well, we'll talk about digouts at some point during the show today too, because there are some that you really can't get into. [00:02:39] Speaker C: You really set up like a little extra living space down there, maybe. [00:02:43] Speaker D: Yes, exactly. [00:02:44] Speaker C: Yeah. So definitely there's a reason why people don't like to go into the crawl space. And like you said, tight spaces. A lot of people don't like that claustrophobic type things. Plus, it's dank and dark and it's nasty. So there's things that live down there that aren't, you know, us. And so that's gross. And then, of course, it's usually cold and wet. [00:03:03] Speaker D: Yeah, well, the claustrophobia alone will turn most people away. And then when you add spiders and, you know, occasional snakes or in the mud and the muck. Yeah. It's not a place people like to have lunch. [00:03:17] Speaker B: Or stick your head down. I mean, it's awful down there. [00:03:19] Speaker C: Yeah. And it usually stinks. Also on top of all that other. [00:03:22] Speaker D: Stuff, smelly is we dig what we do. We really. We used to do remodels for. We've been in business for 27 years and we did remodels forever. And, oh, I don't know, twelve years ago, we kept getting asked to do more and more crawl space work and we ended up thinking, man, we love this. [00:03:42] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:03:42] Speaker D: And so several years we faded remodels out and just do crawl space work. [00:03:47] Speaker B: It's an interesting thing to love, that's for sure. [00:03:50] Speaker C: Yeah, well, somebody's gotta love it, right? [00:03:52] Speaker B: I know. I've had to do work in both of the crawl spaces. I've owned two houses since my wife and I got married. In both houses, the inspector refused to go into the crawl space and said, yeah, they look okay. And in both houses we had horrible, horrible problems. [00:04:05] Speaker D: Yes. [00:04:06] Speaker B: So I'll tell you what, I hated it. I hated every minute of working down there. [00:04:11] Speaker C: Yeah. I didn't love it either. And I spent lots and lots of minutes down there. Yeah. [00:04:14] Speaker B: In my crawlspace. [00:04:15] Speaker C: In Corey's crawlspace. I tell you what, Cory actually is a salesperson for par lumber company and he sells Adair homes. And I don't know if you're familiar with the dare homes, but I'll tell you what, I've got an Adair home, and they take very good care of their crawl spaces. I have a nicely graveled, super flat, super clean crawlspace where, man, I can see from one side to the other. It's practically lighted down there. It just is. [00:04:44] Speaker D: It's barely a crawlspace then. [00:04:45] Speaker C: Barely a crawl space. Except for that there's very little space between the ground and the. But, yeah, so. So I'm kind of spoiled. And then, uh, Corey has some problems underneath his house. Some water there and some damaged, uh, heat duct that needed. That was old galvanized heat duct needed to be replaced. And so I volunteered to help, of course, to save my brother as much money as possible. And. [00:05:07] Speaker D: Oh, well, and some people, some people aren't built for crawl spaces. [00:05:13] Speaker B: No, this is true. [00:05:15] Speaker D: A little large. [00:05:15] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:05:16] Speaker B: Well, buddy's bigger than me. [00:05:17] Speaker C: That's me. It's me. I'm bigger. [00:05:19] Speaker D: I wasn't saying anything about anybody, but. [00:05:21] Speaker C: I squeezed in and I squeezed to places in there. Yeah, there were some places I couldn't go, honestly. [00:05:25] Speaker B: My good buddy Ryan, who is probably half of my size, also helped out. So that was nice. [00:05:31] Speaker C: One third my size. Yeah. [00:05:32] Speaker B: He was able to squeeze in those spots. [00:05:34] Speaker C: Yeah. That I couldn't get to. [00:05:35] Speaker B: I actually have a dropped living room, and I didn't realize. But that area is not dug out. Yeah, it's not dug out any more than the rest of the house. So, I mean, it is. It gets down to very tight. I mean, it's probably lower than code minimum, I would say. Yeah, it's tight. [00:05:54] Speaker D: Yeah, very tight. Yeah. We end up digging out some of those occasionally that you just can't access, so. [00:06:01] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, so, um. So, anyways, finding somebody that's willing to go down there, that's. That's not necessarily your best friend is a good. It's a good company to know. Right? So do you have a website? [00:06:15] Speaker D: We do. [00:06:15] Speaker C: Let's give that out so people who are listening and are interested can go. [00:06:19] Speaker D: Check out your website, yourcrawlspaceguys.com. [00:06:22] Speaker C: Is that y o u apostrophe r e or just you are crawlspace guys? The inside joke there is, I typo'd that the other day when I typed it to cory, and he's like, oh, you are crawlspace guys. [00:06:36] Speaker D: No, it's just your crawlspace guys. [00:06:39] Speaker C: Yourcrawlspaceguys.com. all right. I like that. That's. [00:06:42] Speaker D: And we have some cool videos on our website that shows some of the work that we've done and we, well, even our logo, when we first made our logo, we asked the guy, hey, we want to, we want a happy guy in a crawl space. And when you see our logo, you think, that's perfectly good. He's a happy looking guy and he's in a crawlspace. And our whole crew, they have a great time and people note it. They're like, wow, you guys are weird. [00:07:10] Speaker B: Yeah. And subterranean. [00:07:13] Speaker D: They get after it. They kick butt. [00:07:15] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:07:15] Speaker D: That's kind of what you have to do. Also in crawl space work, it's not something you want to. If you can get the job done and that you just got to get it done. You don't, you don't want to come back the next day or, you know, I mean, some days or some jobs are multiple day jobs. [00:07:28] Speaker B: Sure. [00:07:29] Speaker D: But when you can, you. You just get in there and get it done. [00:07:33] Speaker C: And you definitely don't want to draw it out any longer. [00:07:36] Speaker D: Not at all. [00:07:36] Speaker C: You have to. [00:07:37] Speaker D: No, no. And you don't really take breaks because once you come out and you're all wet and nasty and cold, you. It's really difficult to get back in there. [00:07:44] Speaker C: That's not the time to grab your sandwich. [00:07:46] Speaker D: Not at all. [00:07:46] Speaker C: Take a little lunch break. [00:07:48] Speaker D: No, no, they work. They just work and get it done. Go to pizza at the end of the day. [00:07:53] Speaker C: Oh, the nuances of being a guy who crawls underneath houses all the time. I am excited about this show because I'm excited to hear about some of the stuff that you've come across under people's homes. And, and this is. Would you say that you guys have business that keeps you busy all the time? I mean, is your phone ringing? [00:08:11] Speaker D: Oh, yeah. Yeah, we've. Yeah, we look at jobs every single day, and I think we looked at five jobs this just today. [00:08:20] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [00:08:20] Speaker D: And so, you know, even. It's amazing that even in the summer, how much water people will still have. Cause we do deal a lot of wet issues and crawlspaces that even in the summer in western Oregon, there's water under people's houses. [00:08:36] Speaker B: I wanna learn more about that. [00:08:37] Speaker C: Oh, I definitely do. Okay, we gotta take a quick break. When we come back, more crawl space, guys. You're listening to Tony, Corey, your weekend warriors. We'll be right back. [00:09:09] Speaker A: You're listening to the weeknd warriors home improvement show built by Parl Umbert. Now here's Tony and Corey. [00:09:20] Speaker B: Hey, welcome back to the weekend warriors home improvement show. Thanks for staying with us today. In the show, we're talking about our favorite subject, crawl spaces. [00:09:28] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [00:09:28] Speaker B: At least that's my favorite subject. That's our guest's favorite subject. [00:09:33] Speaker C: Yeah. We've got Larry O'Halloran with your crawlspace guys. [00:09:37] Speaker B: Your crawlspace guys. [00:09:38] Speaker C: Yourcrawl space guys.com. right? [00:09:40] Speaker D: Yes. You got it. [00:09:41] Speaker C: That's so easy. I love that. Your crawlspace guys, which is great. [00:09:44] Speaker B: You know, I just found out Larry lives around the corner from me. [00:09:47] Speaker C: Yeah. You guys are practically neighbors. [00:09:49] Speaker B: Neighbors. [00:09:50] Speaker C: So weird. And how many times have you driven by his house and saw the truck. [00:09:53] Speaker D: And thought, it's more me driving by your house, probably. [00:09:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, no, I drive by your house all the time. I didn't know who you were. I didn't know what your company was or what you did. So this is fantastic. And it's funny because you, it wasn't me who got in contact. [00:10:05] Speaker C: No. Right. It was you. Right. [00:10:07] Speaker B: It's kind of weird. [00:10:08] Speaker C: Yeah. He regular, he's a regular customer at the Newburgh yard. And we've developed a relationship over the years and this was something that was bound to happen. And now here we are talking about crawl space. [00:10:18] Speaker D: Well, we appreciate you guys having us on, so. [00:10:20] Speaker C: Well, it's good to have you. Earlier, during the last segment, you actually talked about a situation where you might be underneath the house and have to dig it out because, well, because you simply can't get past a certain spot. Is that something you run into commonly? [00:10:36] Speaker D: Fairly regularly. So normally it's an older home that wasn't built with today's standards, but you, it'll come up in an inspection often or people are just aware of it, but normally it's something, for example, somebody's going to sell their house and then an inspector tries to get under their house and they can't get in there. And it's for legitimate reasons because they literally, there's no space. Older homes, at times they can be built literally almost on the ground where there's three inches, maybe six inches of space, maybe a foot, but you still can't get under there. 18 is kind of a minimum 18. [00:11:15] Speaker B: From the bottom of the, from under the floor. [00:11:17] Speaker D: Joists correct. To the, to the ground is 18. Then under the beams is typically a minimum of twelve. So what we'll do, and these are great jobs. We love dig outs and they will kick your butt, though. We literally dig our way in and. [00:11:37] Speaker C: Then you push your way out. [00:11:39] Speaker D: Yeah, you're just moving dirt. And we put it in tubs, we have ropes, we have conveyors. And it's a team sport. [00:11:48] Speaker C: Wow. For sure. [00:11:50] Speaker D: There's been times where a homeowner will try to do a dig out themselves. [00:11:54] Speaker B: Sure. [00:11:54] Speaker D: You know, have their buddies come over. But it's an overwhelm and it's quite spendy, honestly, to do a dig out. You know, there might be some instances where it's just a small section of a house that needs to be dug out. 112 foot by 15 foot corner or something. [00:12:11] Speaker C: Like under a sunken living room. [00:12:13] Speaker D: Yeah, like under. Yeah, under Corey's sunken living room. We'll be over soon to do that. But. But no. For example, we did this house in Newburgh a few years ago that quite a. I know it's probably 1600 square feet house, which we ended up digging 35 cubic yards of dirt, which is three and a half dump trucks of dirt. [00:12:35] Speaker C: Oh, my goodness. [00:12:36] Speaker B: That's incredible. [00:12:37] Speaker D: Under this house by hand. And we love it. It's fun. And, you know, it matters greatly how hard the dirt is. If it's hard dirt, it's a different task of. But typically, and it's probably just the grace of God. Cause we. Most of the dirt is decent to dig out in most dig outs. But you go in there and you're literally digging yourself in. Throwing it in tubs or throwing it on conveyors. And just get it out from under there. [00:13:07] Speaker C: Just get it out of under there. [00:13:08] Speaker D: Yeah, get it out from under there. [00:13:09] Speaker B: So I wanna talk about some of these specialized tools. You have to have. You have a system, obviously, that works for you. You said tubs, buckets, conveyors. [00:13:16] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:13:17] Speaker B: You know, so like my crawl space access is in the middle of my home. [00:13:21] Speaker D: Yes. [00:13:21] Speaker B: So you have to get it over to the crawl space hatch, which is in your floor, and get it up and then out of the front door. [00:13:29] Speaker D: That would be a very difficult way to do it. And we have done it that way. But what we typically would want to do is we would literally come in, cut a hole in your foundation, in the side of your foundation, a little two foot space, cut the foundation out and. And dig down so that we can set a conveyor in there. Now, we have conveyors that will run under the house as well, smaller ones, but we, we have this big one that we use that can get the dirt out from the house and either dump it in a trailer or dump it because you don't want to handle it twice. It's just so much work. [00:14:05] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:14:05] Speaker D: And, and so we try to dump it right into it. And even if it's too far, we'll get two of them and we'll. We'll piggyback them. [00:14:13] Speaker B: Just conveyor all the way to the dump truck. [00:14:15] Speaker D: Exactly. Yep. [00:14:15] Speaker B: That's really smart. I I did not envision a digging out of crawl space that way. I literally was thinking some guy standing at the crawl space hatch, lifting buckets up through the floor to another guy running outside and dumping him. [00:14:30] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. [00:14:31] Speaker B: That would be incredibly difficult. [00:14:33] Speaker C: Bucket brigade. [00:14:34] Speaker D: True confession. When we first started doing digouts, we did a couple that way, and we said, hmm, this is not efficient. This hurts your back more than it should. And so, you know, just thinking, all right, there's. And so, yeah, and a lot of. I shouldn't say a lot. Occasionally there'll be older homes and we can talk about foundations, because maybe there's not even a foundation. [00:14:58] Speaker B: Right. [00:14:59] Speaker D: And so it's quite easy to dig your way in. But if there is, we just cut a section out. It's worth, uh, the effort to. To take for a couple hours to cut that out and have free access that whole time. [00:15:09] Speaker B: So let me ask you this. What about, you know, the structural integrity of the home? I mean, do you have to consult with structural engineers when cutting that concrete back? How does that work? [00:15:20] Speaker D: Oh, well, the small amount of concrete we cut out for the foundation isn't typically. That's not where the structural issue is going to, you know, be a problem. But when you do a digout, you can imagine. So you've got these. The house is typically out in. The interior is set on pier pads. Now, granted, if it's not dug out properly, it probably doesn't have adequate pier pads either. But there's something in the middle of the house holding up the house. So typically there's a little concrete block, you know, like normal construction. And so the house is resting in the middle on those blocks. But when you dig out, now you're digging around those. So now that it's sitting on a little pinnacle of dirt. [00:15:58] Speaker C: Yeah. Right. Which is not unsupported by anything around it. [00:16:02] Speaker D: Yeah. And. And that's not structurally what we want. So we end up also, in the process of these digouts, we end up replacing, typically, all the pier pads and posts. And honestly, when they're. When they're tight like that, they're typically not built correctly either. So we end up adding beams. [00:16:22] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [00:16:23] Speaker D: And we have a structural engineer that we use. [00:16:25] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:16:26] Speaker D: Uh, that can tell us where to put beams and where to put a pier pads and such. [00:16:30] Speaker B: Wow, that's a really, really cool thing. I mean, honestly, just being down in the two crawl spaces that I was in, I lived in a little house in Cedar Hills, and that crawlspace. I mean, Tony was down there. [00:16:41] Speaker C: Yeah, it was. [00:16:42] Speaker D: You get, you get dragged into all of his projects, don't you? [00:16:44] Speaker C: I do. [00:16:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:16:45] Speaker D: You guys really are the weekend warriors. [00:16:48] Speaker B: That's a fact. But, you know, I was down in, when I was down there, clearly half of the posts were barely on the, on the concrete pads. You know, you're supposed to have four by sixes and all your splices. Half of them weren't that, you know, the case. I mean, that thing in an earthquake probably would have just fallen over. [00:17:08] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:17:09] Speaker B: So, yeah, structurally so you're structurally upgrading the building. [00:17:12] Speaker D: Yeah. So in the, in these digouts, again, that's where our slogan came. We dig what we do because we do a lot of digging. Yeah. And, and so the guys get pretty excited when we do dig outs. And, and again, if you attack a digout with just a couple of your buddies, you will get way overwhelmed. So to talk to, kind of go back to what you asked before about some of the tools and some of the things we use. It's, it's basically little minion shovels. [00:17:41] Speaker C: Yeah. Like little, like little spades. [00:17:44] Speaker D: Yeah, little spades. You can just buy them at Home Depot or Lowe's or something. And we use hammers. [00:17:49] Speaker C: Or parental, maybe. [00:17:52] Speaker D: Yeah, you can buy them at par and, uh, and you can. Although. Yeah, they have. And hammers. A claw hammer works beautifully because you got to get the, you got to loosen the dirt. [00:18:03] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:18:03] Speaker D: You're not going to put your foot on it and dig it out like a shovel, you know. [00:18:06] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:18:06] Speaker D: You got to get to where you can use your arms. So it's got to be soft enough to move the dirt. So we use shovels, we use picks, and occasionally we'll put a spade bit on a roto hammer. And if the dirt's real hard and you'll loosen it with a spade bit on a roto hammer. And so you can imagine how butt kickingly hard that can be. [00:18:25] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [00:18:26] Speaker C: That's knowing your tools, what you can accomplish with them, and that's determination to get a job done for sure. Okay, we got to take another quick break. When we come back, more with Larry O'Halloran and your crawlspace guys. You're listening to Tony and Corey, your weekend warriors. Don't go away. [00:19:07] Speaker A: You're listening to the weekend warriors home improvement show built by Parl Umberge. Now here's Tony and Corey. [00:19:20] Speaker B: Hey, welcome back to the weekend warriors home improvement show. Thanks for sticking around today. Tony and I are talking about crawl spaces and we have a crawlspace pro Larry O'Halloran. Is that right? [00:19:32] Speaker D: You got it. [00:19:33] Speaker B: O'Halloran. [00:19:33] Speaker C: Was there a question mark after that? We scratch that out. That's not a question. [00:19:37] Speaker B: Larry O'Halloran with your crawlspace guys. That's the name of your company, your crawlspace guys. Local company in the Portland metro area. You do a lot of work in Yamhill county. [00:19:48] Speaker D: We go from. [00:19:48] Speaker B: That's how you know, Tony. [00:19:49] Speaker D: We go from Eugene to Portland. We do love Yam Hill in Washington county. [00:19:54] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, everybody's home, right? [00:19:58] Speaker D: Yeah. Yeah. [00:19:59] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, that's cool. As far south as Eugene and as far north as Portland. [00:20:04] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:20:05] Speaker C: You haven't been up into Vancouver? [00:20:06] Speaker D: No, we're not licensed in Washington. [00:20:08] Speaker C: Sorry. [00:20:08] Speaker D: For all you Washington. [00:20:09] Speaker C: That's where it's at. All right. We got lots of washingtonian listeners. We heard from a washingtonian listener today, actually, I got a phone call from a listener who was listening to us on KVI in Seattle, and she called to get some information that we had shared. She was trying to get ahold of Matt White with the killers. Oh, she's got a. She's got a sugar ant problem up there in Washington. And she was trying to get ahold of Matt White with the killer. So we gave her that information. She said she sure loves the show. She enjoys listening every Sunday, and she appreciates us. So there's something for you, Corey. I don't know. You didn't get to see that, but. [00:20:50] Speaker B: No, I didn't. [00:20:51] Speaker C: I talked to her on the phone today, so. [00:20:52] Speaker B: Well, if you're listening in Eugene on KPNW, feel free to give Larry a call. [00:20:58] Speaker C: Yeah, give Larry. [00:20:59] Speaker B: You got crawl space needs. [00:21:01] Speaker C: Yep, that's right. So anyways, we were talking about being underneath the crawl space. We talked a little bit about digging out of. And I'm thinking to myself, it kind of reminds me of my favorite pastime or reading about or watching on tv. Sometimes treasure hunting. Do you sometimes feel like a treasure hunter? Like you're in this space where nobody's been for about 100 years and you're thinking, I wonder what could be down here? [00:21:29] Speaker D: We've often thought it would be fun to find something valuable. But most of the time you do find interesting things of very little beer value. [00:21:38] Speaker C: Very little value. [00:21:39] Speaker D: You know, we've seen. We've had beds under houses. It's like, how did the bed get under the house? It had to have gotten under there. Somebody threw it under there where they were putting the floor down or something. Cause you can't get you have to cut things up to get them out. You know, basketballs and toys. Strollers, baby strollers. Way deep under that. It's like, how did this thing get under? [00:21:59] Speaker B: See, nowadays, when I go on to job sites, what I see down there are mountain dew bottles, cigarette boxes, you know, fast food bags from the contractors. [00:22:09] Speaker C: That were framing the house. Yeah. [00:22:11] Speaker B: Like, oh, just chuck it down there. Cover it with plastic. You'll never see it again. [00:22:15] Speaker C: My situation is a little bit different. We built a house and their home, I mentioned earlier in where we live, and we had to excavate the property in order to put the foundation in. Well, when he started to excavate the property, which was underneath the. The mobile home that was there before had taillights on. It was really old wheels under it and tail lights. They tore that thing down, and then they started excavating the property. We found a backseat for a 57 Chevy that was. There was lots of car parts, wheels, and. [00:22:47] Speaker D: Well, maybe that's how it got under there. Now, we know things like that. [00:22:51] Speaker C: But, yeah, it was kind of a big deal. Cost me a couple extra thousand dollars just to get stuff thrown away that we didn't expect to be. Not dirt. [00:23:00] Speaker D: Yeah. Yeah. We haul off a lot of stuff, you know, with regards to the digouts and just kind of general cleanup. Um, if you don't mind, I'd like to kind of. Because people have misconceptions about things in their crawlspace. [00:23:12] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [00:23:13] Speaker D: So we often find even just two layers of plastic, which is kind of a no no in western Oregon, especially because what happens is moisture gets in between the two layers, and when the water kind of goes away, it doesn't soak into the soil, and it doesn't evaporate very quickly. So you got this. A lot of moisture, unneeded moisture trapped. And typically, too, when people have two layers, they're covering up stuff. Like what, Corey, you just mentioned, you know, they're covering up the beer cans or the whatevers. And. And so we often will go in, and we. First thing we do, we just clean the crawl space, pull all the old plastic, all the debris, all the, you know, and the junk. The junk, yeah. And wood debris that you just don't. It's. It attracts bugs. [00:23:56] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:23:57] Speaker D: Wood debris is a no no in a crawl space. And anyway, so we go down there and clean up. And so one of my scary stories I'll tell you. [00:24:09] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. What's the worst thing you've ever seen in a crawl space? [00:24:12] Speaker D: Well, the worst thing I've seen that scared me the most was a live skunk and I was about 4ft from his face. [00:24:20] Speaker C: You were in the danger zone. [00:24:21] Speaker D: So I had knew the skunk potentially could be. There was a report, hey, there might be a skunk down there on the country, empty home, vacant. The relator said, hey, just go help yourself and inspect it. Tell us what you think. So nobody even knew I was there. I go down, it's an exterior access. I crawl under there. And I took my flashlight and shined for several minutes looking for eyeballs, looking for him and didn't see him. So I thought, okay, it's safe. So I go crawl and I'm inspecting this whole entire crawl space. And in the middle of this house is a chimney that went down through the floor and it's, you know, the bricks go into the dirt. [00:25:03] Speaker C: Sure. [00:25:03] Speaker D: And it had been undermined by rodents, maybe possums or maybe the skunk or whatever. And that was one of the things that we were looking at actually to fix. We were going to fill it in so that it wouldn't be undermined the way that it was. So I'm looking under there, I'm looking all around the chimney. I had spent. [00:25:22] Speaker B: Are you on your belly? [00:25:23] Speaker D: I'm on my belly. [00:25:24] Speaker B: Okay. Okay. [00:25:25] Speaker D: Yeah, it's a tight crawl. [00:25:26] Speaker B: It's very tight. [00:25:27] Speaker C: You were literally eye to eye with. [00:25:30] Speaker D: This guy and I had been around him for ten minutes and he had mercy on me. [00:25:35] Speaker C: Oh. [00:25:36] Speaker D: And so when I'm going to leave, but I thought, I'm going to look at this one more time. So I have it locked in my head because we're going to fix this situation. And I shine my flashlight and I'm about, I'm no more than 4ft away from him and he's arched his back and he's ready to spray me. [00:25:55] Speaker B: Oh, my. [00:25:56] Speaker D: And he just sprayed me in the face. I was probably 40ft from the crawl access hole alone out in the country. Didn't, you know, unfamiliar with the house. It would have been horrific, you know. [00:26:06] Speaker C: It would have been. [00:26:07] Speaker D: I might still be down there. Oh, my goodness. And I saw him and I just spun and crawled as fast as I could. And as soon as I got about, you know, eight or 10ft away, I thought, I think he's probably happy. Then I'm leaving. And I felt a little bit relieved, but I guarantee I didn't, did not stop until I got outside. And then I told the reader, hey, we got to get rid of the skunk before we do any work down there. [00:26:30] Speaker C: He's going to have to go. It's good. There's not enough. There's not enough room under this house for the two of us. Yeah. [00:26:35] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:26:35] Speaker C: One of us is gonna have to go. Yikes. That would be, that would be both scary and also gross. Gross. Also. Yeah, I know my mom has told me stories. I've never been face to face with a skunk at all, ever. But where my mom grew up in Hood river, she said they used to see skunks all the time. The dog would go out and he would come back, smell smelling like a skunk. And anyway, so my mom said apparently they would wash their clothes in tomato sauce or something like that. [00:27:06] Speaker D: I've heard that. [00:27:07] Speaker C: Does it work? Most of their clothes were pink. I think is probably what the result of that is. [00:27:11] Speaker B: I don't know if it works or not. I imagine it does. [00:27:13] Speaker C: They're pink, old wives tail, but they don't smell like skunk anymore. Yeah, that's what I've heard. So I don't want to test that theory. I don't want to know how you get rid of skunk smell. I don't want to know. [00:27:23] Speaker D: I don't either. [00:27:23] Speaker C: And I'm glad that I don't know. That's where I'm at on that. So better a basketball than a skunk, I would think. But any way you look at it, you got to get it out, including the plastic, so that you can address that. Here's what I'm thinking. Do you go into these crawlspaces periodically and find that there is already no plastic? [00:27:43] Speaker D: Yes. [00:27:43] Speaker C: So, I mean, it deteriorates or it was never there or something along those lines. [00:27:49] Speaker D: So I can tell you, too, that regarding the dig out thing and the no plastic, a lot of times if there's no plastic and if it's a tight crawl space, there's often not adequate space for anybody to get down there and put a vapor barrier in the first place. So you typically, if there's no vapor barrier, you're going to have some rot issues. There's just way too much moisture. Moisture comes up on the foundation, gets on the sill plate, it'll rot the sill plate, the rim joists, and it can be very devastating to the house. [00:28:19] Speaker B: Well, in living in virtually a rainforest, essentially like we do, it never dries out. [00:28:25] Speaker D: Yes. [00:28:25] Speaker B: So you just have moisture upon moisture upon wetness. Which is another question I have about digouts, is if you get to that point and you're digging down into a crawlspace, what do you do with the moisture or wetness? I've had two crawl spaces where I've had standing water. Yes, I want to know about that. We have to take a break in a minute. But what do you do when you get to an area where maybe you're digging out and you've hit the water table? [00:28:49] Speaker C: More about that and so much more. As soon as we get back. You're listening to Tony and Corey, your weekend warriors. Don't go away. [00:29:07] Speaker A: You're listening to the weeknd warriors home improvement show built by parl Umber. Now here's Tony and Corey. [00:29:19] Speaker B: Hey, welcome back to the week at Warriors Home Improvement show. Thanks for staying with us today. Tony and I are talking about crawl spaces. We have a professional crawl space guy here, your crawl space guys, Larry O'Halloran. And we've been talking about the things that you do, Larry, under the crawl space or under your home, which is your crawlspace and what you do down there to make them so much better. But I want to take a quick second, if you haven't already. Go check us out on our YouTube channel. We are recording this right now. We're our video podcast. It's going up on YouTube. And we're also on Instagram show. We're on Facebook. You can check us out there. So go ahead, subscribe. Like, you know, do whatever that is you need to do, but that'll keep you up to date on all of Tony and I's stuff. [00:30:06] Speaker C: Yeah. I tell you what, when you mention that, it makes me think about actually the ad that I heard for your business, the crawlspace guys. I absolutely love that ad. You said it was recorded by some guys at a radio station in McMinnville. [00:30:20] Speaker D: Yes. [00:30:21] Speaker C: What radio station? [00:30:21] Speaker D: Is it the kycl or whatever it's called? Yeah. [00:30:26] Speaker C: Awesome. [00:30:26] Speaker D: The local radio station, McMinnville. They nailed it. They made this. We, you know, they, they know, too. We dig what we do. We love what we, you know, in our work. And I. And they are fascinated by crawl spaces as well. [00:30:37] Speaker C: I actually want to hear that ad. Let's let our listeners hear that ad. Go ahead and play that. [00:30:42] Speaker A: Do you have work that deeds doing under your house? But what lives under there anyway? And who you gonna call for that job that needs doing in the crawl space under your house? Call the crawl space guys. What an icky. It doesn't bother them. They install sump ups, fix dry rod, dig out tight crawl spaces, the crawlspace guide for anything that you need done in that crawl space under your house. Check them out [email protected]. or call them at 50398 00:15 64. The crawlspace guys and Mac, that's who you're gonna call. [00:31:26] Speaker C: That is a great ad. That's pretty funny. Love that ad. [00:31:30] Speaker D: Yeah, we love it, too. They, they just nailed it the first. Their first attempt. [00:31:36] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:31:36] Speaker D: And, yeah, that's a keeper. [00:31:38] Speaker B: So gonna call. [00:31:39] Speaker C: That turned out really great. I love that. And that's. That's absolutely telling your story. You know, you talked about sump pumps, installing sump pumps right there in that ad. So that's obviously something that you guys do. When do you find that it's not? I mean, do you sometimes go over and somebody says, hey, look, this is what's going on. We got water under the house. We need a sump pump. [00:32:00] Speaker D: Yes. [00:32:00] Speaker C: I mean, they already know that's what every week is. [00:32:02] Speaker D: So if. If you can avoid a sump pump. We will avoid a sump pump. Occasionally you'll have a low point drain. While most newer homes have low point drains. The problem with the low point drain is it's not low enough. [00:32:14] Speaker C: It's never. It's never low enough. [00:32:16] Speaker D: It keeps you from having six inches of water under your house, but it doesn't keep you from having two or three. [00:32:20] Speaker C: Right. [00:32:21] Speaker D: And two or three is just as bad as five or six. So, so what we do, um, if we can trench. Okay, so some. And I just to kind of educate folks a little bit, because people will say, well, we put a sump pump in our house, but we still have all this water because oftentimes they don't trench. So we would typically go down there and we'll pull all the plastic and remove it, throw it away. Um, any debris, whatever's down there, comes out. We'll dig a trench system around the whole perimeter down the middle, kind of as we see fit. We work with the topography. We look at the house and say, all right, this is, this is what we're going to do. And we dig trenches. We put in a perforated pipe in all the trenches. And you really literally just create a mini drainage system down like a french drain under your house. Exactly. Yep. Direct all those trenches to a low point that we choose where we're going to put the pump. And we'll put a nice catch basin in the, line it with rock, put a pump in there. Typically, the discharge pipe for the sump pump will go out and tie into the gutter drain system. And when the pump goes on, the water goes out with the gutter water drain system. And we have an electrician that follows us and puts an outlet down there to permanently supply. But it's amazing how much water. Uh, you know, obviously typically it's just an inch or two or three in a normal home. But we've had some uh. You want to hear a cool story about water in your house? [00:33:53] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:33:54] Speaker D: So this uh, this was only just probably three or four months ago. Um, we have. We took a video of one of our guys and he jumps down into this crawl space that has about 18 inches of water. [00:34:07] Speaker C: Oh no. [00:34:08] Speaker D: Probably nearly 2ft. Anyway. So he's. [00:34:10] Speaker B: Swimming pool. [00:34:11] Speaker D: He's, he's. He's able to kind of crawl. Not on his belly, you know, on his hands. So it was probably a little deeper crawlspace, 30 inches deep. But the topography fell off though to such that it was 5ft of water on the far end of the house. And what we're wanting to do is get down there with a sump, with a. With a temporary submersible pump so we could get rid of the water so we could do the work and put trenching and get a permanent fix for this house. But it's a great video. He's under this house and he's. He's crawling through this brown water and it got deeper and deeper until he's, you know, he's 5ft down and anyway. Yeah, that's a. [00:34:52] Speaker C: He had to go down. [00:34:53] Speaker D: He had to go down. We wanted him to go down to the deep end so that he could put the pump down there. [00:34:58] Speaker C: Right. [00:34:58] Speaker D: So we could leave it for a day or two and suck the water out. So he'd come back and he did. [00:35:02] Speaker C: I mean he was at some point his entire body, head and all was underwater and he was placing the pump on the ground. [00:35:09] Speaker D: I think he dropped it. Oh, he dropped it. He kept his head above but he lowered it down. It's on a cord that you can. It holds its own weight. [00:35:17] Speaker B: And then he had to doggy paddle back. [00:35:18] Speaker D: And then he had doggy paddle back. Yeah. [00:35:20] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:35:20] Speaker B: That's horrible. That's unbelievable. Well, I think you would be fairly proud of Tony and I. When we did my kitchen remodel in my home we found that there was. We had to cut the floor back for a reason that I'll go into later or some other time. But when we pulled that floor back to the crawl space there was, I don't know, eight inches, ten inches of. [00:35:40] Speaker C: Water standing, standing water. [00:35:42] Speaker B: I had the summer before Tony was down there and he had helped pull all of the old duct work out. And I had an h vac guy come out and he installed all brand new flex duct, insulated, soaked, totally wrecked. So that all had to come out. But what we had realized was the reason it was leaking, I'll give you the quick answer is the drainage pipe from our furnace was piped right into the crawlspace, into that little bit of water dripping all day, every day, hot and cold. It was created that much water accumulating. [00:36:16] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:36:16] Speaker B: So we trenched, we dug these trenches, put the pipe, put the rock, put the basin in. [00:36:22] Speaker D: I am impressed. [00:36:22] Speaker B: And then we piped it out. [00:36:23] Speaker C: Big old dry well in there. Like. [00:36:25] Speaker B: Well, it was a lot easier. [00:36:26] Speaker C: Tall. [00:36:26] Speaker B: Yeah, it was a lot easier to do because the floor, you know, was a twelve by twelve area. We just cut the whole floor out. [00:36:33] Speaker C: We just took the whole floor out. Right. Exposed the whole space. [00:36:35] Speaker D: Oh, that's kind of cheating. Yeah, that's a little. [00:36:37] Speaker C: We definitely did. But while that floor was out, we had to dig a two foot by two foot by two foot pier hole to pour a block. [00:36:47] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:36:48] Speaker C: To post up to a beam that was installed incorrectly and was not supported. [00:36:54] Speaker D: Yes. [00:36:55] Speaker C: A beam carrying the second floor with no support. [00:36:57] Speaker D: Wow. Yeah. We deal with that kind of stuff, too, but. Yeah, but. So if you guys ever quit paranouse, you can come. Yeah, we get. [00:37:04] Speaker C: Right. [00:37:04] Speaker D: Except we are your crawl space. [00:37:06] Speaker C: Except we don't love it as much you do. [00:37:09] Speaker B: I learned one thing after doing that project. [00:37:11] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:37:12] Speaker B: I would hire you to do it again. I would never do it again, ever. [00:37:15] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:37:16] Speaker B: Awful. [00:37:16] Speaker C: It was a lot of work. It was a lot of work. A lot of hard, physically demanding work. [00:37:24] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:37:24] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:37:24] Speaker D: Well, that's why I like back to the sump pump thing. People will put a sump pump in and. And it can. It'll help, certainly. But to keep your crawl space dry, that trenching is required. And that's where most of the homeowners, you just. It's too much work. [00:37:38] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:37:39] Speaker D: And it's too difficult. [00:37:39] Speaker B: I'll tell you. We did not trench the entire perimeter. We did not do that. We trenched where all of the water was standing and that, you know, like 12ft in one direction, 10ft in another. [00:37:51] Speaker C: Once we determined where it was coming from, it was easy for us to determine where the trick was. [00:37:55] Speaker D: But you got rid of the source of water, too, so it shouldn't be. [00:37:58] Speaker B: We also did that. [00:37:59] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:37:59] Speaker B: But I tell you what, I'll hear that thing kick on once or twice a year. [00:38:04] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:38:04] Speaker B: You know, when there's heavy, heavy rain outside, I'll hear it kick on. [00:38:07] Speaker C: And every time he sends that water out. So glad we did that. [00:38:10] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [00:38:11] Speaker D: You know, in much work, the house I lived in a year ago, we had a sump pump and it would go on in really rainy times. It would go on every ten minutes. [00:38:22] Speaker B: Wow. [00:38:22] Speaker D: Oh, yeah. So we had four or five inches of water under there when we first discovered it. [00:38:28] Speaker C: Wow. [00:38:28] Speaker D: And since we are your crawl space guys, we thought, well, we better go fix it. [00:38:32] Speaker C: Yeah, that's right. Since it is our house. Yeah, absolutely. And you didn't have to hire somebody to do it, so look at how much money you saved. [00:38:39] Speaker D: That's right. [00:38:39] Speaker C: It's absolutely a great idea. You know, we started, we touched on rot, finding rot in, in those places where the ground is needing to be cut back and the plastic is not in there. This leads me to a thing where I feel like very regularly the job that you set out to do becomes a completely different job. And is that something that's become commonplace for you? [00:39:08] Speaker D: You mean like additional rot? [00:39:10] Speaker C: Right. I mean, literally the job changes from clean my crawlspace to re frame my main floor. Yeah. I mean, I feel like that, that you have to be prepared for that. And maybe that's, that does happen. [00:39:27] Speaker D: I'll tell you honestly, though, we try to be very thorough when we're looking at houses and trying not to. It does happen, but we try to be thorough so that we kind of have both eyes open when we go in and we know we're going to do this. [00:39:40] Speaker C: Already have an idea of what to expect. We got to take a quick break. More with weekend warriors when we come back. Don't go away. [00:39:55] Speaker A: You're listening to the Weeknd warriors home improvement show built by parl Umber. When it comes to big or small projects around the home, Tony and Corey, you've got the know how and the answers to make your life just a bit easier. Now here's Tony and Corey. [00:40:16] Speaker B: Hey, welcome back to the weekend warriors home improvement show built by par lumber. Thanks for staying with us today. In the show we've got Larry O'Halloran from your crawlspace, guys. He's in the studio with us talking about digging out crawl spaces, cleaning them up. What are some of the other things you guys do, Larry? [00:40:34] Speaker D: Well, we do a lot of rot repair. And when we say rot repair, it could be wet rot from wet, moist lumber. Or we do find a lot of powder post beetle damage, little bit of termite or carpenter ants, not so much. Mostly powder post beetles. [00:40:55] Speaker C: What is powder? What is a powder post beetle? [00:40:57] Speaker D: Well, I don't know what the beetle actually looks like you haven't seen it. No, but I sure see his damage. [00:41:02] Speaker C: Oh, you see? [00:41:02] Speaker D: So it literally will turn the interior of the lumber to powder. [00:41:08] Speaker C: Wow. [00:41:08] Speaker D: Like, you can take a beam and take a hammer and. And drive it, and it looks decent from the outside. If it gets really bad, it will start to manifest itself on the outside, too. A lot of times, just little tiny pinholes. But the interior of it is literally powder. [00:41:24] Speaker C: Wow. [00:41:25] Speaker B: Crazy. [00:41:25] Speaker D: I was in a crawl space just yesterday in off a whole gate in Portland, and the. The beam holding up the. And this is the middle of the house. This is not the perimeter. I'll tell you about that whole house. It's kind of. It exemplifies what we're talking about with powder post beetle damage. But the. The beam was. Was destroyed enough in the interior of it that the weight of the house was crushing the beam. So the beam was starting to have the smash into the post holding it up. [00:41:58] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:41:59] Speaker D: And. And the house is moving the. The perimeter of that house because of the powder post beetle damage. Um, the rim joists, or. Excuse me. The sill plate was damaged to an extent that it was. The weight of the house was starting to crush. And so instead of an inch and a half, uh, you know, sill plate. [00:42:18] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:42:18] Speaker D: You've got an inch and a quarter. Oh, almost down to one inch. [00:42:21] Speaker C: Collapse. [00:42:21] Speaker D: Yeah. So you're smashing it. [00:42:22] Speaker C: Wow. [00:42:23] Speaker D: Anyway, we fix all that kind of stuff. [00:42:25] Speaker A: Wow. [00:42:26] Speaker C: Well, that's a major, major, major undertaking. I mean, you did say that you were remodeling before, so your expertise is not limited to being in the crawlspace, but actually, you can see a pretty much a big picture if you're replacing structural things. Yeah, structural things like posts and beams and. [00:42:46] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:42:46] Speaker C: And sill plate. [00:42:48] Speaker D: Yeah. So a lot of times, too, with a sill plate on the exterior of a home, we attack it from inside and outside. Often with a sill plate, you'll have to go out and replace the bottom course of siding. Remove it. [00:43:00] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [00:43:01] Speaker D: So you can get to that sill plate. And. And it's often the sill plate. It could be a rim joist, could be multiple joists, depending on the style of construction. And usually, if it's that bad, then it can get into the subfloor. And if the subflooring is bad enough, at times you have to remove flooring, and you really gotta. You cut holes in people's floors. [00:43:23] Speaker B: It's incredible. [00:43:24] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:43:25] Speaker C: Have you been in a situation where it was so bad that you had to just go in the house and then take up the floor, take up the subfloor and expose that. [00:43:34] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:43:35] Speaker C: And do all that work. I mean, sometimes you can replace things from underneath, but when it, when it reaches the floor, sheeting or the decking. [00:43:44] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:43:44] Speaker C: At some time you have to replace that. [00:43:46] Speaker D: If it's a hardwood floor and it's not too bad, we can often plunge, cut and get to where. Just remove, remove the subflooring and leave the hardwood floor intact. But if it's very. If it's a very large section, you just can't. And so, yeah, we've, we've had houses where, you know, you're going around the perimeter and you're cutting 4ft, 6ft out from the wall, sometimes 12ft, and you're removing all the subflooring. And so you walk in, there's a big hole in your house, in your floor and we have to fix all that stuff. And normally there'll be beams and posts and if it's that bad. [00:44:20] Speaker C: So I'm gonna, I'm gonna just take a really quick detour. [00:44:24] Speaker D: Go ahead. [00:44:24] Speaker C: And I'm going to talk to you about your emotional side. Do you get heartbroken when you have to tell a homeowner, this just went from 15,000 to 50,000 or something like that. I mean, if it's the floor that's under the. That's under their cabinets. Corey's house. Corey's kitchen, which was covered under insurance, thank goodness. Corey's kitchen. His cabinets were custom made and they were, they were part of the floor. I mean, the floor. When the floor had to come up, the cabinets had to come up, and when the cabinets had to come up, the wood on the walls had to come up and the wood on the ceiling had to come off. Literally had to strip his entire kitchen because the floor got wetland. I mean, it was literally like that and so can of worms for his. You saw what looked like replacing a small section of floor turned into a $60,000 kitchen remodel. And again, his was covered under insurance, thank goodness. But do you sometimes find your heart going out to people who maybe don't, you know, and you're just thinking, ah, I've got to go tell. [00:45:23] Speaker D: And then the fun thing about Corey's kitchen, though, is you get to enjoy it and you see it. Yeah, we do kind of. We do feel bad for people because crawl space money is not like fun money. [00:45:35] Speaker C: Yes, kind of. They don't get to enjoy it. They just. It's needed to know that it had to get done but they don't get to appreciate that new, fresh paint smell. [00:45:44] Speaker D: It's needed. It's important. But it's not as fun as painting your front porch or something. [00:45:48] Speaker B: It's funny because I would actually appreciate it. I mean, the kind of person that I am, I'm very. I like to look at the structural aspects of buildings and understand a healthy home and having a crawl space like that, full of water and rot, it's not a healthy crawl space. And, I mean, I would appreciate it. Yeah, I totally would. [00:46:08] Speaker C: Well, you. You do appreciate it because it's been fixed in your house already. [00:46:12] Speaker D: And to go back to your point, too, with our, you know, kind of remodel experience, it helps a lot that we know how to do framing because we do get into a lot of. And we love structural repairs. People often ask us, hey, you know, or. And you'll find that older homes, maybe they weren't built with enough beams and posts or. Or the pier pads are way spread. [00:46:34] Speaker B: Apart and they're sagging. [00:46:36] Speaker D: And they're sagging. There's deflection. Over the years, things move, or you get this rot element into it with water rot or pest damage. And the house is moving. And. And so we love to go in there and we'll remove beams under people's houses. It's a task to remove a beam laying on your stomach in the dark under people's houses. And we love it. [00:46:59] Speaker C: Yeah. So you talked earlier about the skunk that you came around. [00:47:01] Speaker D: Yes. [00:47:02] Speaker C: I don't know. Did you name him before you. [00:47:03] Speaker D: No, I called him Mister Skunk. [00:47:05] Speaker C: Mister Skunk. Okay. So that was an amical resolution, right? You came out, all was okay. He got removed and feasibly went on to make a new skunk life somewhere in skunk town. [00:47:20] Speaker D: Right? [00:47:21] Speaker B: Skunk town. [00:47:22] Speaker C: What about the ones that didn't work out so good? I mean, like, the. The things that you see under there that are even less desirable than a skunk. [00:47:31] Speaker D: You. [00:47:32] Speaker C: I mean, like snakes, for example. A lot of people just simply cannot deal with snakes. And yet that is an environment where you will find snakes. Have you found snakes? [00:47:41] Speaker D: Yes. Now, ironically enough, you don't find very many snakes in town. [00:47:46] Speaker C: Really? [00:47:47] Speaker D: Yeah. But as soon as you get out of town in western Oregon. [00:47:51] Speaker C: More rural, huh? [00:47:52] Speaker D: Yeah, they're more rural. We did do a house where I think the record was they caught. I can't remember, honestly if it was ten or twelve snakes. But we have a guy that one of our guys doesn't mind snakes. Now, if it's left to me, I'm fleeing and running. I don't like snakes. And by the way, two of our sons, my wife and I have three kids and they all work in our, for our business. [00:48:16] Speaker C: Oh, awesome. [00:48:17] Speaker D: And, and our, my boys, they don't like snakes either. But anyway, so they're pulling plastic and there's a snake and they pull plastic and there's three snakes and it was not. Yeah, we don't dig snakes, but you. [00:48:30] Speaker C: Deal with it and you move on, right? [00:48:32] Speaker D: We do deal with it. [00:48:32] Speaker C: We got to take another quick break. When we come back, more with your crawl space, guys. You listen to Tony Core your weekend warriors. Don't go away. [00:48:56] Speaker A: You're listening to the Weeknd warriors home improvement show built by Parl Humbert. Now here's Tony and Corey. [00:49:09] Speaker B: Hey, welcome back to the Weekend warriors home improvement show built by par lember. If you haven't already, go check us out on our Facebook page, our Instagram, and even YouTube. We're on YouTube right now. We're recording this. We're going to be airing it on there any day now. But go check that out if you want to listen. All of our videos, we're doing how to's up that are up there now. We've got some, some quick tips. We'd love it if you went and subscribed. You can also follow us on Instagram show. So go check that out. [00:49:38] Speaker C: That makes me think, Larry, how do you get a majority of the business that you have? You said you're busy all the time, which is awesome. That speaks to the quality of the work that you do. But how do you get the most of the business that you get realtors. [00:49:52] Speaker D: And we love our realtor friends, but most people don't go under their house, so they don't really know they have an issue in their crawlspace until they go to sell. They go to sell. An inspector goes into there and says. [00:50:05] Speaker B: Or he peeks through the door and says, I'm not going in there. [00:50:08] Speaker D: ABC. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so most of our work comes from realtors. [00:50:13] Speaker C: Oh, okay. Well, that's good. I was thinking maybe you were going to say from that little 32nd ad that you have that plays on the radio, which is a great ad. [00:50:22] Speaker D: We do get calls from that. Who can you call, by the way? [00:50:25] Speaker C: Crawl space guys. That's what it. Absolutely great. I love that. That's good. So you get a lot of referral business, obviously, because of the quality of your work and because of your reputation. I again referred to you for so long as just the guy who smiles a lot right at my store, which I thought was great, but I love having you on the show. I want to share with the folks, your website again, which is yourcrawlspaceguys.com dot. [00:50:52] Speaker D: You got it. [00:50:53] Speaker C: That's it. [00:50:53] Speaker D: That's it. [00:50:54] Speaker C: It's literally yourcrawlspaceguys.com. yes. Great. Go check that out. And if you don't want to do it, if you don't want to be under the house, Larry knows a guy that doesn't. Yeah. [00:51:05] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:51:06] Speaker B: Well, let's go real quick. Let's go over for the listeners just tuning in. What are the services that you offer? The complete list. What are all the things that you guys cover? [00:51:16] Speaker D: Well, we do a lot of general cleanup of crawlspaces, new plastic, removing fallen insulation, etcetera. We do a lot of digouts that we mentioned. We do rot repair. One of the things that we haven't talked about and we could, is we add vents to crawlspaces or we clean vents. [00:51:35] Speaker B: We fix vents, because crawl space vent venting is very important. [00:51:39] Speaker C: Very. [00:51:40] Speaker B: If you don't have a conditioned space. [00:51:42] Speaker D: Yes. So again, older homes, typically, or people have built a deck over the years and they covered up a bunch of their. Their vents. [00:51:52] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [00:51:52] Speaker D: So we will either, you know, revitalize those same vents, or if it's a house that just doesn't have proper venting, we'll either put vents in the rim joists. If there's no rim joist, we can. We'll have concrete. We have a concrete saw company that will come and cut holes for us in the foundation and advance. [00:52:13] Speaker C: Just retrofit some foundation vents that look just like the other ones. [00:52:16] Speaker D: Exactly. [00:52:16] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:52:16] Speaker D: Yep. [00:52:17] Speaker B: How do you know if, uh, if it doesn't have enough venting, what are you. What are you looking for? Like my. In my home, for instance, I have, you know, my crawl space does not smell good. I mean, it. It has a very musty. [00:52:31] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:52:31] Speaker B: Stinky odor that, you know, frankly, comes in right through my. I have a lot of pocket doors in my house. [00:52:36] Speaker D: Yep. [00:52:36] Speaker B: And they sit right on the car decking. [00:52:38] Speaker D: Yep. [00:52:39] Speaker B: And it's like a highway for this. [00:52:41] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:52:41] Speaker B: Stinky crawl space air. What do I do about that? [00:52:45] Speaker D: So, first of all, um, if that's the case, we would make sure that you don't need a sump pump because a lot of the wetness, that smell comes from wet. But that given, um, we would also go in there occasionally. If you can't get proper ventilation, we'll even add a fan. We have, you know, there's little fans. [00:53:07] Speaker B: Powered fan. [00:53:08] Speaker D: Yeah, it's a powered fan that fits right on the venta, and it brings in fresh air and. And just get that air moving in there. [00:53:16] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:53:16] Speaker D: If you. If you don't have enough space to put adequate crawl space vents, then you might consider adding a fan. And there's dehumidifiers and other things, too. But, uh, normally we find that if you can just get airflow, you'll be in good shape. [00:53:30] Speaker B: Hmm. I'm have to think about that. [00:53:32] Speaker C: Yeah, that makes good sense. [00:53:33] Speaker B: The smell coming out of that crawl space is not good. [00:53:35] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:53:35] Speaker B: Don't like it. [00:53:36] Speaker D: Yeah, we like that smell. [00:53:37] Speaker C: Yeah. So one of the things that you apparently do that you didn't mention is you rescue live wildlife and transport it to a safe place. [00:53:49] Speaker D: Well, let's not exaggerate that. But we are not exterminators. But we do have a fun story of Daniel, one of our guys. He is. At the end of the day, we're getting ready to leave this house, and somebody saw in the crawl vent something move. And we thought, ah, maybe a cat got in there, and this is a vacant house. We thought, we got to get that thing out of here. So they jump back down in the crawlspace with flashlights, and they're looking, and somebody spots this possum. So, instead of shooing the possum out or in, some of us were voting to exterminate the possum. But I. Daniel goes down there with a blanket, and he catches this possum with his bare hands and rescues it, brings it up crawling across the crawlspace. [00:54:36] Speaker C: Wow. [00:54:37] Speaker D: With his elbows, and goes out in the backyard and lets it go. [00:54:40] Speaker B: Wow. Rabies and all. [00:54:42] Speaker C: Oh, man. Well, I mean, that's good. [00:54:44] Speaker D: That's kind of going the extra mile. [00:54:46] Speaker C: Yeah, that is going the extra mile. That's. You know, I've been called on, my brother called on me years ago to go underneath his house and investigate a smell that was coming up through. Well, the vent in the floor is an old 1930 something house, and he had this really bad smell coming up through the vent. And so. But he didn't feel comfortable going under there, so instead, he felt more comfortable sending me. You know, little brother always gets called. [00:55:13] Speaker B: On who's bigger than your older brother. [00:55:17] Speaker D: He's the big little brother. [00:55:18] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:55:19] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:55:19] Speaker C: So I crawled in there, and I found the culprit underneath there, and I just took a box knife, and I cut away the plastic that it was sitting on, and I just, like a plate, and I just dragged it out on its little plate. There was no other way to get that out. You were not going to scrape those remains. I mean, it was pretty emaciated. It was covered in maggots. You know, it was gross. Yeah, it was. It was definitely the worst case scenario. And the only way to get it out was simply to just take the whole thing right. And get it out. And I had to drag it out of there, and it was not any fun. But you know what? It needed to be done. [00:55:58] Speaker D: Yeah. And I must confess, I would rather find a dead possum than a live. [00:56:06] Speaker C: One, because dead possums don't fight back. Right? [00:56:09] Speaker D: That's right. They won't. They're gross, but they won't bite you. [00:56:12] Speaker C: Yeah, they don't bite a. [00:56:14] Speaker D: But, no, we. And we don't do a. You know, normally we've run into a lot of dead rats, cats. You know, you're crawling and you put your hand in something and you just know, oh, that's not. That's not mud. That's not a rock. What is that? And you look with your light, and it's like, that's a rat. [00:56:31] Speaker C: No. [00:56:31] Speaker D: And that happens. Or you pull plastic back and there's something dead in your face from years gone by. Yeah, but no, we definitely deal with that. That kind of stuff. [00:56:43] Speaker B: You're definitely building a case for people to call you. Yes, because I don't want to do any of that. [00:56:49] Speaker C: No. [00:56:49] Speaker D: Yeah, but your method of cutting the plastic out, that's the way you do it. We go down there with garbage bag, cut out the. You know, and shove it in a garbage bag. [00:56:56] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:56:56] Speaker D: And you don't want to touch it. [00:56:57] Speaker C: No, you definitely don't. I mean, you just don't. And then that was. That was. My appetite was gone. So free pizza later. I was not partaking in. I just. Just couldn't seem to stomach it for whatever reason. But. But I totally see where you're coming from with those super difficult tasks that. That you have to take on while you're underneath somebody's house. Here's another super difficult task that I wonder about. Do you insulate? [00:57:19] Speaker D: We insulate minimally. Meaning by, you know, if. [00:57:24] Speaker C: Meaning once every couple of years now. [00:57:25] Speaker D: Just small areas. We're not really big insulators. That's a. We have another company that we use. Sure. I'll put a plug in for my buddy Troy Schultz, but. So if it's a small area, we do. We. We do often remove damaged insulation. We'll clean the crawl space. Part of what we do. We'll clean it all out. If it's a small section, you know, ten foot area. We don't mind insulating that. What we find often is it's just small pieces that are missing that somebody was doing something and took it down. [00:57:58] Speaker B: And never got some possum needed. Nest material. [00:58:01] Speaker D: Yeah. Or the cats or the rats, or somebody knocks it down and it gets damaged with wetness, and so we throw it away and. And we'll do small sections. [00:58:09] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:58:09] Speaker D: But insulation is definitely a big thing that we want to do in crawl spaces, and we will recommend people to. [00:58:17] Speaker C: Oh, sure. [00:58:17] Speaker D: Reinstate when they need to still work. [00:58:19] Speaker C: That needs to get done. It's just not your guys. [00:58:21] Speaker D: It's not your crawl space guys. [00:58:23] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, there was. There was a little bit of insulation work Cory and I had to do in his floor as well. [00:58:27] Speaker D: Did you do it? [00:58:28] Speaker C: Did a little. Yeah, we did. We did it. Feel like we did a little bit of everything. [00:58:31] Speaker D: That was fun, huh? Getting into your eyes? [00:58:33] Speaker C: Not. Okay. We have more to cover when we come back. Larry, don't go away. You're listening to Tony and Corey, your weekend warriors, and we'll be right back. [00:58:57] Speaker A: You're listening to the weeknd warriors home improvement show, built by parl Umber. Now here's Tony and Cory. [00:59:11] Speaker B: Hey, welcome back to the weekend warriors home improvement show. Thanks for staying with us today in the show, we're talking about crawl spaces with your crawl space guys. Larry O'Halloran. It's a very irish name. [00:59:24] Speaker D: It is irish and english name. [00:59:25] Speaker C: Really? Ireland. Ireland. I can't do. [00:59:30] Speaker B: Is that pirate Irish? Would you call it Pirish Ireland? [00:59:36] Speaker C: I me lucky gold. I don't know. Something piratey irish. It's good. You're doing good, Corey. I want to plug something for parliament company really quick. If I could plug away. Coming up on May the fourth be with you. [00:59:51] Speaker B: Star wars day. [00:59:52] Speaker C: That's right. Star wars day. May the fourth be with you. Coming up on May the fourth in Spokane and Bothell at our locations, par lumber locations in Spokane and Bothell, they're having a deck expo in Spokane. They affectionately refer to it as the Dex bow. It's been called that for a long, long time. Yeah. [01:00:10] Speaker B: So if you're listening on KXLY 09:20 a.m. in Spokane. [01:00:15] Speaker C: Spokane. That's right. The Dexpo is at par lumber company on Mayenne, the fourth, and then also in Bothell, Washington. If you're out that way, probably listening on what? [01:00:27] Speaker B: Kg. Kg? [01:00:29] Speaker C: Kg. Why in Olympia. [01:00:30] Speaker B: Olympia. [01:00:30] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. Maybe. [01:00:31] Speaker B: I'm not sure where Bothell is maybe Seattle Kvi. [01:00:34] Speaker C: Probably Kvi. So if you're out in those areas, the deck expo or the decpo is definitely something you don't want to miss. Par lumber company has building deck building materials on sale for amazing value. They have displays on hand. They have professionals on hand to talk about. The product suppliers and manufacturers representatives will be on hand. They'll be giving things away. They're serving some kind of edible, like, food. [01:01:08] Speaker B: Hot dogs. [01:01:09] Speaker C: Yes. Scrump diddly. I'm just something good to eat, whatever that is. You never know what it's going to be. They're giving away amazing things. They're giving away, like a grill, maybe a traeger grill or maybe a green mountain grill. Probably some yeti stuff, like a yeti cooler. Really expensive yeti cooler. Those things are so expensive. Do you have a yeti cooler? [01:01:30] Speaker D: I do not have, Larry. [01:01:31] Speaker C: No. Yeah, well, they're expensive. I think I know why you don't charge enough for the people whose crawl spaces you clean to afford Yeti. Cool. That's true. [01:01:41] Speaker D: We will give you a good deal. So we don't need to afford Yeti. Cool. Yeti. [01:01:46] Speaker C: So that's gonna be going on at the Spokane and Bothell par lumber locations on May 4, the Dex bo. And you won't want to miss a great savings to be had and a lot of information, so don't miss that. All right. I needed to, needed to do that. How was that? Pretty good. Plug. [01:02:05] Speaker D: That was beautiful. [01:02:06] Speaker B: Fantastic. [01:02:07] Speaker C: Okay. [01:02:07] Speaker B: Great job, Tom. [01:02:08] Speaker C: So we're talking. We're talking to. Larry wants to go. Talking to Larry O'Halloran with your spit, your crawlspace guys about everything. Crawlspace. You mentioned something earlier that kind of piqued my interest, actually. You said sometimes you do some leveling. [01:02:24] Speaker D: Yes. [01:02:25] Speaker C: We're talking about a house that is or is not sitting on a foundation, but is no longer level with the ground, which means part of it has sunk, or I. The ground has shifted, or something has happened that causes. So when you're in the house and you drop a cup, it rolls all the way out of the room. [01:02:45] Speaker D: Yeah. My favorite. My favorite house leveling story. We did a house once. When you walked in the front door, off to the back, right. The house sunk nine inches. [01:02:55] Speaker C: Oh, man. [01:02:56] Speaker D: So it had been. It was older. [01:02:57] Speaker C: It was noticeable, for sure. Yeah. [01:02:58] Speaker D: You know, 85, 90 year old house. It was sitting on a rock, literally. That was the corner, kind of the cornerstone of the house. Well, over time, the rock had rolled, so to speak, and the house had sunk. And. And it was a two story house, so it's quite heavy. And so we went in there and we jacked it up and leveled it. We got it within an inch, which we felt was pretty good. Yeah. You know, we could have went more, but there's a. There's house. Leveling is fun and it's. It's kind of tricky because sometimes leveling it is. Can do more damage maybe, than it's worth. [01:03:35] Speaker C: Yeah. Than leaving it where it was. [01:03:36] Speaker D: Yeah. So you compromise. But we're. We love it and we. We've gotten pretty good at it. [01:03:41] Speaker B: But Tony actually jacks things up at. [01:03:44] Speaker C: His house all the time in not so many words. [01:03:48] Speaker B: Or mostly sheetrock, so to speak. He jacks that up pretty good. [01:03:53] Speaker D: I can jack up Sheetrock. [01:03:54] Speaker C: I've done a little bit of. I've done a little bit of sheetrock work that I'm not super proud of. But you know what? It was my work and so I don't have anybody to blame but myself. And that's fine. [01:04:04] Speaker D: Yeah. We don't run into much drywall in the crawlspace. We like that. [01:04:07] Speaker C: No, probably not. So you have the ability to jack a house up and you have the ability to level it. I mean, the house is what, 30ft by 50ft or something else. How in the world. [01:04:20] Speaker B: Let's talk about that process. [01:04:21] Speaker D: So we go down there with jacks, obviously, but we have a bunch of jackpads and literally we use 20 ton bottle jacks. We have various sizes. Some of them are the little shorties. And we'll go down there and we. The trick, I shouldn't give all my tricks out, but you can't just go and jack up the corner of the house. [01:04:39] Speaker C: Right. [01:04:41] Speaker D: But what we do is we'll set jacks throughout, everywhere and you jack it up gradually. We like to tell people your house doesn't even know it. [01:04:50] Speaker C: Doesn't even know it's happening. Yeah. [01:04:52] Speaker D: And we sneak up on it and, and so if you do it kind of tenderly and, and do it gradually, oftentimes, you know, if you're going to move something three or four inches, you're going to get some cracking and whatnot. But. But if you do it gradually, we have. It's amazing how minimal at times the damage can be. And you go back through and sometimes you'll have to adjust doors. The nine inch house was obviously extreme. [01:05:18] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:05:18] Speaker D: Most of them, though. You know, if you get something that's out a couple inches, you really start to feel it. Two, three inches gets really bad. You know, typical is four or five or six inches. It's where people really like, hey, we got to fix this. [01:05:31] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:05:32] Speaker D: And. And so we'll go in there, turn. [01:05:33] Speaker B: Your bedroom into a putting green, and. [01:05:35] Speaker D: We often have to add, you know, beams under there. You know, you're jacking up the floor, but the wall is staying behind. So we end up getting underneath and looking where every wall is. And we put beams under those walls. And you have to have solid points of contact, otherwise you'll crush the floor joists. Also, when you go to try to jack something up. So you gotta have really nice blocking under there. And we just jack it up and get it, you know. [01:06:03] Speaker C: And you're using levels that are up in the house or. [01:06:06] Speaker D: Yeah, we'll often set up a transit up inside the house. We mark everywhere, and then we jack. And we have. Usually, it's a fun. It's when you go ready to Jack, everybody's having fun. We're like, okay, somebody's up on top. Hey, yeah, you're doing good here. Up another inch there, down a half inch here. And you're running around, and you got literally, we'll have 2030 jacks down there sometimes. And guys are jacking here and there. Hey, that room back there, let's have somebody do six or eight pumps of the jack on this little section. And you go back and forth until you get it dialed in. And then you. And then you repost and repair pad things so it doesn't move again. [01:06:45] Speaker B: So let me ask you about this. So, like, that house that had dropped nine inches. [01:06:50] Speaker D: Yes. [01:06:51] Speaker B: You jacked the corner of the house up. What's, you know, is it just nine inches of air gap? I mean, what do you do there? [01:06:59] Speaker D: Yeah, well, that would bring. We had to pour it. We poured a foundation under that house because this house was sitting on rocks. It was sitting on pieces of concrete. [01:07:11] Speaker C: Sitting on a corner. [01:07:11] Speaker D: Oh, it's amazing, too. [01:07:12] Speaker C: It was on the cornerstone of the house. That's funny. [01:07:16] Speaker D: It's amazing how much stuff will be holding up the house. [01:07:22] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [01:07:22] Speaker D: Blocks of wood, blocks of rock, a stone, a log. [01:07:30] Speaker B: A 57 Chevy. [01:07:31] Speaker D: Yeah. An old car part, whatever. [01:07:33] Speaker C: Carburetor. Yeah. I mean, I've seen a few situations like that in homes that are not. But you know what? Usually they have some skirting around that kind of covers all of that stuff. And then when you see the skirting come off, it exposes what's actually going on, which is that it's stacked on just about anything. They could get to stack it under there. [01:07:51] Speaker D: Yeah. Which. Which would open up to a whole other topic of foundation, putting foundations under existing homes. We do a lot of foundation repair where a corner maybe has sunk and, and we'll go under there and pour a broader, bigger footing, for example, under the footing so that it doesn't sink. [01:08:14] Speaker C: Oh, sure. [01:08:14] Speaker D: And there's a lot of different little tricks that we can use to fix foundations, but we really enjoy doing full perimeter foundations under old homes. [01:08:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I want to hear about that. [01:08:27] Speaker C: I do. I do, too. I want to see how something like that happens. We actually have to take a quick break. But when we come back, we're going to talk to you some more about maybe some foundation repair and some pouring new foundations under a home that hasn't had one. You're listening to Tony and Corey, your weekend warriors. We'll be right back. [01:08:57] Speaker A: You're listening to the Weeknd warriors home improvement show built by Parl Lumber. Now here's Tony and Corey. [01:09:11] Speaker B: Hey, welcome back to the weekend warriors home improvement show. Thanks for staying with us today. In the show, we're talking about crawl spaces. We've got Larry O'Halloran with your crawlspace guys. He's a local Portland metro area guy, where they come in and they do what every cleanup. Crawl spaces. They do everything before the break. We're talking about pouring new foundations, though. [01:09:36] Speaker C: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, you were talking about leveling a house, jacking it up. And so at the time that you've jacked it up so that you can level it, it is now sitting on nothing except your bottle jacks. [01:09:47] Speaker D: Correct. [01:09:47] Speaker C: Okay. So here's what, here's what boggles my mind a little bit. Are you then going to. So the, the homeowner has decided that they would like to add a foundation. We don't have a foundation. It was always just these pieces of wood. And then, of course, a stone in the corner with a cornerstone of the house. And, and then. But we want to add a foundation, and so we're gonna, we're gonna do that. And now you have all these bottle jacks and the house is sitting on them and you have to pour concrete where they're at. So how, so this is weird. And I'm thinking to myself, do you just pour segments of foundation first? [01:10:22] Speaker D: No. [01:10:23] Speaker C: And then pull the bottle jacks out and then pour new segments? I don't can, is this, are you. [01:10:28] Speaker D: Reveal all of our. You revealing? No, no, no. Because I could tell you and you still aren't going to want to do it. [01:10:34] Speaker C: Very interesting to me. I just have to know. [01:10:36] Speaker D: So we go down there. Now this would typically be an older home that doesn't have a foundation. [01:10:40] Speaker C: Sure. What about this is. I'm going to just side mark here. [01:10:43] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:10:43] Speaker C: What about a foundation? What about a manufactured home? Have you poured foundations under manufactured homes? [01:10:49] Speaker D: We've poured strips of concrete for tie downs, but that's quite simple. [01:10:55] Speaker C: Okay. [01:10:56] Speaker D: And we've done some brick work around. I shouldn't even say that because I don't. [01:11:00] Speaker C: You don't want to do anymore? [01:11:01] Speaker D: We don't want to do that. Never forget I said that. [01:11:03] Speaker C: Okay, I'm with you. Go ahead. [01:11:05] Speaker D: But anyway, so typical example, farmhouse, you know, or it's in the town, but it was the farmhouse in the neighborhood and then grew up around it. [01:11:13] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:11:13] Speaker D: Doesn't have foundation. So we go down there and we will, as you mentioned, we'll set up. We. We go around the perimeter, but in about two or 3ft. [01:11:24] Speaker C: Okay. All right. [01:11:25] Speaker D: We put beams. Okay. And we jack, we relieve all the tension the way to the house. So now that the house is sitting on these jacks. Now, to be fair, the interior, we don't really like the whole entire house at one time to be sitting on bottle jacks. We would prefer some of it to be still mounted on posts that aren't, you know, quite as movable as a bottle jack. [01:11:52] Speaker C: Wobbly, top heavy. [01:11:53] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:11:53] Speaker C: If you will. [01:11:54] Speaker D: So we might do the middle first and get all that dialed in and. And put permanent posts and pier paths. [01:12:01] Speaker C: Okay. [01:12:01] Speaker D: And then go around the perimeter. So now the perimeter is sitting on these bottle jacks and, uh. Or, well, it's sitting on beams, on bottle jacks. And then we dig out around the perimeter and we have our buddy Jay olet. He's an engineer that we use. [01:12:15] Speaker C: Okay. [01:12:16] Speaker D: That he would design a, which isn't rocket science, but we still have to have it engineered and permitted and all that. [01:12:22] Speaker C: Not to take away from the amazing work that Jim Olett does. [01:12:26] Speaker D: No, no, no. But he'll tell us. [01:12:28] Speaker C: He is an engineer after all. [01:12:30] Speaker D: He will tell us, you know, here our footing is going to be this big. And he usually gives us a couple options because when you're laying on your belly, setting up concrete forms and then pouring that concrete, you want a couple options of maybe how you can design it. [01:12:45] Speaker B: Oh, sure. [01:12:46] Speaker D: So we will dig it out of along the perimeter. And you typically have to dig a little deeper because you want your footing deeper, you know, than the rest of the house. And so you got your footing. And we'll, we'll typically set our, our footing and our stem wall all at the same time. So you only have to do one. [01:13:03] Speaker C: Pour, a mono pour, if you will. All right. Okay. Okay. [01:13:07] Speaker D: Which is a little tricky, but it's. It's quite fun. And we add rebar and, and. And so there's a lot of work that goes into these houses. You might be there for two, three weeks getting it ready, and then you pour it in 2 hours. [01:13:22] Speaker C: Wow. [01:13:23] Speaker D: And. [01:13:24] Speaker C: Yikes. [01:13:25] Speaker D: Yeah. And. And so, you know, after we pour, of course, we strip the forms. And on a typical situation like this, you'll have a little bit of perimeter siding repair, but we'll put tie downs. We pour tie downs into the concrete and attach those to the house. Purges engineering. [01:13:46] Speaker B: So you're almost kind of earthquake retrofitting. [01:13:50] Speaker D: Yes, yes. And we do some of that as well, even on regular homes where we might attach earthquake fitting to existing foundations. But, yeah, we'll put clips and tie downs and fix the perimeter and then the inside. Often, of course, we alluded to this, but whenever you're doing a perimeter foundation, you pretty much know that all of the interior pier pads are wrong also. So we end up putting new pier pads. Occasionally we have to pour big footings under homes, and we'll have a line pump come. And the line pump guy doesn't typically want to go down there. So one of us will go down there, operate the end of the hose, and he is been overlooking and operating the machine. And we'll fill up those forms underneath the house with concrete. And anyway, pull all those forms, put new plastic, and they've got a brand new, clean, nice crawl space sitting on. [01:14:45] Speaker C: A foundation for the first time ever. [01:14:46] Speaker D: It's fun for the first time ever. [01:14:48] Speaker C: Since it was built in 1892. [01:14:50] Speaker D: And we think the houses thank us. [01:14:53] Speaker C: They're like, oh, you know, they do, right. It's like they've been standing on the really on junk. [01:14:59] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:15:00] Speaker C: They've been standing on a really thin little thing for all these years, and now their feet are just like, ah. [01:15:06] Speaker D: Yeah, they like us. [01:15:07] Speaker C: I'm sitting. Yeah, that's great. It's like putting on a pair of shoes for the first time, maybe. So we've covered a lot of things that the crawl space guys will do. A lot of things that your crawl space guys will do. And so I'd like to kind of go back over some of those very common things you mentioned that you will come and do general maintenance. Let's start at this point. Customer calls you up on the phone. Hey, I've got a situation with my crawlspace, and I need to get it cleaned up. Right. Okay, so what's that going to cost me? [01:15:40] Speaker D: So we would, we would typically, customer calls says, hey, come check it out. So we go out there, we'll crawl the house. And because each home is, is different, you might think, oh, I have a problem. And it's really not that bad, or, this is nothing and it's something. So we go out there, we'll crawl around and look at the whole situation. And, for example, it might just be all they need is to be cleaned out and new plastic. So we'll go down there and clean out the crawl space and, and put new vapor barrier down. And that's it. That's a simple little task. A lot of times it's. It's water. It's water and it's structural things as most of our calls. And we've got a wet crawl space we're trying to sell. We're in a hurry. And, and we kind of pride ourselves in taking care of homeowners and realtor situations because we, we do so much work for them. [01:16:29] Speaker C: Right. [01:16:29] Speaker D: So we come running. We will typically look at something within 24 hours of your call and, and often can get right on it if they're, if it's a time sensitive. Sometimes, you know, people find out something at the last minute, hey, we need to get this done in the next three days. Can you do it? [01:16:44] Speaker B: My loan won't go through or something. [01:16:46] Speaker D: And we try to do it, so. But we deal with a lot of water issues, you know, again, recapping. We do structural repairs. We fix a lot of rot, rot, wet rot, powder, post beetle kind of damage, you know, posts or pier pads, or we'll find that a pier pad moved over time. It kind of rolled and, and now the post isn't sitting properly. And so we'll go either reset that pier pad or maybe give them a new pier padditive and reset that post so that it's sitting on something firm. And so we do a lot of that kind of stuff. We do a lot of. We find that with leveling homes that we talked about earlier, houses have sunk a bit. So we'll go back in there and jack them up and level them. And it might be a house that's even fairly new, you know, 2030 years old that, that pier pads were or they weren't built. Right. Somebody missed something over the, over the history of the house. [01:17:45] Speaker C: They didn't compact the dirt properly or something. [01:17:47] Speaker D: And we fix, we fix all that kind of stuff. [01:17:49] Speaker C: Yeah. And then, of course, something else that you mentioned that you do a lot or do you really like, you really like to do dig out if they've got a situation where they just can't move around underneath the home or there's not enough space clearance between the framing and the ground? Yes. [01:18:04] Speaker D: And here's another. We find that often, occasionally, I shouldn't say often, occasionally, the house might be dug outright, but because of the heat ducting, you can't get from one section to another. So we call them access points. So we'll dig an access point so that you can crawl throughout the whole, you know, perimeter of the house. We'll put two or three spots where you can get under a beam or under a heat duct so that you can get around the whole house. We do quite a bit of that as well. [01:18:34] Speaker B: That makes a lot of sense, actually. [01:18:35] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:18:35] Speaker D: Just to leave the house, the crawl space happy. That's what we want to do. [01:18:38] Speaker C: Well, that makes perfect sense. I mean, I totally get all that, and I love that there's somebody out there like your crawlspace guys that I can call and come and go underneath my house and deal with all that is that's down there and I don't have to do it. [01:18:52] Speaker B: The dirty work. [01:18:53] Speaker C: The dirty work. It's just absolutely not something that anybody wants to do. [01:18:56] Speaker D: Well, we'd love for anybody to call us. We. We try to get on stuff. We have a great crew. Lots of companies do good work, honestly. But one thing that sets us apart is the friendliness of our crew and the promptness and the thoroughness, and we enjoy what we do. [01:19:15] Speaker C: I love it. Larry O'Halloran, yourcrawlspaceguys.com. that's it. Yourcrawlspaceguys.com. thank you so much for being on the show. [01:19:22] Speaker D: Thank you, guys. [01:19:23] Speaker C: We really enjoyed having you. [01:19:24] Speaker D: All right. [01:19:24] Speaker C: It's all the time we got. This has been another episode, episode of. [01:19:26] Speaker B: Your weekend warriors right here, the weekend warriors radio network. [01:19:29] Speaker C: Have a great week.