I think I have some other photos around that I'll add from time to time; of the crawl space, rather than myself. When we moved in here, we had some plumbing problems, among other things. Rather than a basement, we have a crawl space, but not the kind that you access from outside the house, as there is a foundation wall that encloses the crawl space. The crawl space is accessed through a trapdoor under the stairs. A small ladder leads into the crawl space, which has enough headroom to kneel comfortably. However, all the plumbing and sewer lines are in the crawl space, and most of it requires sliding yourself along on your back. It's kind of a tight fit, and it was kind of nasty. Our house was a three-unit apartment building when we bought it, and I am not talking about upscale apartments. At some point, there had been a sewer problem and, for some reason, the cover to a sewer clean-out was lost, broken, or whatever. Someone had used a cover that was too small and, in order to make it seal, they had placed a towel over it. Sewage had leaked through the sides, and parts of the now nearly disintegrated towel had been sucked into the sewer pipes, partially blocking them. The plumber was not pleased about the job and, while he fixed the problem, he was not inclined to clean up the mess. It wasn't a pretty job. I cleaned out as much of the crud as I could. Since there was no access to the outside except through the trapdoor, that meant filling five-gallon buckets with it and bringing it up through the trapdoor, then dumping it along the railroad tracks. Then, I put down some lime, waited for a few months, then removed as much of that as I could, added diatomaceous earth to reduce any problems with bugs, and put in a vapor barrier. The picture is of me, a few year ago, coming up after doing one of these jobs, I forget which. It's not a pretty picture.
Pretty sure that I remember that picture from our Seniors Only Halloween costume party a couple of years ago. Something about the Creature from the crawl space, or similar to that.
@Ken Anderson We have the same set up here. When I bought this house in 1992, I planned to cut an access to the outside through the foundation, but I never did. I also planned to dig out part of the crawlspace to make a cellar, but didn't do that either. We never had any sewage problems, but we "encapsulated the crawlspace to minimize moisture. We had a new septic put in earlier this year, and now we have FIVE cleanouts instead of two.
Today, Bobby has been working on one of the nearby rental houses again, doing his handyman thing. The renter was out of town and didn’t leave any water dripping, so a pipe froze and broke. He has no clue about fixing those kinds of things, so Bobby is over there, crawling around under the house in the crawl space. We have made two (frustrating ) trips to Home Depot thus far (Have I ever mentioned how much we HATE Home Depot ? ) , and poor Bobby had a terrible time trying to find the parts that he needed. This last trip, one of the important things was those clamps that fit around the pipe and then you screw the sides into the wood to hold the pipe in place. The worker (when at last we found someone) , clearly had NO clue about plumbing items , and when , as a last resort, we asked about that metal plumber’s tape, it did seem to ring a bell with the guy. At first he looked totally baffled by the term plumber’s tape, but then his eyes lit up, and he said, “oh, you meant those Rolls with Holes ? “ So now, we know what it is officially called down here in the South......
I've had two houses that were built in the early 1920's with plumbing to match. The one in Orlando had a crawl space, luckily open to the outside. As my late husband absolutely refused to get under there, I spent a fair amount of time scooting on my back working on the Rube Goldburg-esque plumbing under there. When we DID have to bring in a plumber, he'd always say the same thing: "I'VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THIS!"
When crawling around in crawlspaces that have been at any time open to the outside and available to animals, be extra cautious. When I lived in the South, we would sometimes get plumbers who were afflicted with something called Larval Migrans. Cat hookworms would penetrate their skin, but could go no further since humans are not a host. The larvae would migrate under their skin and the plumbers would be covered with little "trails" of red where the larvae had burrowed.