I spent last night pulling fiberglass insulation from under my house, and this afternoon bagging it; I’d have bagged it last night but I damn near passed out from heat and being out of breath. In all, I bagged 10x 40 gallon bags.
Tomorrow I go and clean up mold. And some time after Monday (when the plumber fixes my leaky water heater), I will add vapor barrier and new insulation. 😅
That shit is/was no joke. I had a head-to-toe tyvek suit, nitrile gloves, safety glasses, and an n95 mask. I’m in love with the tyvek suit for future dirty jobs, but in all it was super hot and difficult to breathe. I couldn’t have done the job without them though.
Anyway, my point is that for those of you who do this day in and day out, you all rock! I have always appreciated those who do the dirty jobs, but now I revere you too.
Thank you for all that you do!
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For next time, the masks with the exhale valve are 100% worth it. Foam-lined safety goggles are well fitting and sleek now; they work really well for things like overhead insulation removal.
I wear cut gloves all day every day and have for years. It’s becoming standard on all safety conscious job sites now. Even a pair of MaxFlex is better than nothing. Then, I can still get nitrile gloves over those for wet work.
Have fun storming the castle!
Those n95’s from 3m suck shit. The nose part has a gasket, which is great, but the chin part keeps riding up and I have to keep adjusting it. 0/10 will never buy again. Thanks for the tips!
Yeah, everyone is different. I don’t like the Milwaukee brand masks but other guys swear by them. Maybe try those.
How weird, those 3-piece 3M N95s (Aura) are my absolute favorite ever!
How do you keep the chin pry from riding up?
Maybe it’s just my face shape, but I basically extend the top and bottom panels almost completely. The edge of the bottom panel is pretty well under my chin. Comparing with your photo, I think my middle panel would be a little lower relative to my face. Maybe you can find a video somewhere on how to best fit that particular mask?
Edit: the other thing I do after extending the panels is to put the mask on my face pretty much where/how I’m going to wear it, then pull the rubber bands over my head, then do some final fine adjustments to make sure that there are no gaps.
I knew a guy who swore by swimming goggles for eye dust protection.
Yeah, that’d work. Modern PPE is getting so good that you can tailor the level of protection to the task and maintain as much dexterity as possible.
The gold standard is those positive pressure masks where you wear a fanny pack with a fan and a filter, and it’s hooked up to your mask via a hose, blowing filtered air onto your face. Not only are they completely dustproof, but they’re also especially nice in hot environments, as there’s a constant, refreshing breeze on your face. They make welding masks like this too. The only downside is that prices tend to be in the thousands.
Shout out to the white collar workers. I’ll much rather crawl in the sub-floor in a tyvek suit than sit in a office all day staring at a screen and try to get along with my boss and co-workers knowing that I’ll be doing that for the next 30+ years all day every day. Even the shittiest construction jobs rarely last longer than few days. I can deal with that.
staring at a screen
Nothing compared to repetitive manual labor. You don’t know what boredom is until you’ve worked on an assembly line.
Hard disagree.
I’ve been doing factory labor for six years and I love it. I don’t have to talk to anyone and can zone out all day, it’s great.
Chat she craves the unionized factories, we must give her her rightful desires.
I barely consider it manual labor sitting by an assembly line doing something that should be done by a robot in the first place. There’s no two day alike in what I do.
IT guy here, if there is one thing I wish for, there are many days where I wish I was just a cleaner, to actually be able to complete a task that is visible for a change and not just stare me blind at a half functioning JIRA board, a broken active directory and list of 365 teams almost as long as the list of employees.
Not to mention having to deal with systems I have no idea about and should have zero access to but somehow have global admin and am incharge of access controls which are half documented, yet the system is the most important in the company.
We are working on improving it, it goes slowly…
If it paid the same, I think being a street view driver seems interesting/fun…
Do you think construction workers just do one job and then never work again??
No.
No, they’re referring to how when a job finishes up, they typically move to a new job site. Change of scenery instead of the same four walls every day for years.
Sparky here. Usually work in commercial and industrial environments, but every now and then I do sidework, and once or twice I needed to suit up in a full tyvek suit because insulation was all over the crawlspace. Shits not my favorite, but it kept it off me haha.
Yeah, it’s def better than dirtying up your clothes, especially when you can’t wash any clothes due to no water. 😥 😂
Same. When we had our attic insulation replaced, I was incredibly impressed at the crew crawling around up in that heat and knocking it out in 1 day.
Kudos for doing it yourself and for wearing the proper PPE. Fiberglass is nasty. Good luck with the rest of the project, nothing more satisfying then a well maintained house!
I think you mean “thank you for your service”
I thought about saying that, but it didn’t feel right considering that phrase is usually meant for our servicemen and women of the armed forces.
