Part of my job is crawling around under
people’s homes. This is by far the
nastiest part of being a home inspector here in Salem, Oregon.
Most of the time crawl spaces are really not all that bad. Spiders, yes but in the Salem, Oregon area we
have very few seriously poisonous ones.
Spiders don’t chew on your home and I am quite a bit bigger than most of
them so, they don’t bother me that much.
When
cats can get access, things get really nasty.
Your fluffy-wuffy
uses crawlspaces for a litter box, urinal, and
graveyard. Yep, it can get nasty when
old Garfield can get under your home.
Not
only does Mr Snookums defecate in the areas I need to crawl, he also shreds and
disconnects ducts, and crawls between the heated floor and the insulation and
ruins the fiberglass insulation.
Sometimes
there are signs or other critters: rats, mice, raccoons, opossums. They all like crawlspaces but it seems that,
per capita, the cats have market share on shear crawlspace destruct
ion.
Jim Allhiser President/Inspector
http://SalemOregonHomeInspections.com
503.508.4321 jallhiser@perfectioninspectioninc.com
Salemoregonhomeinspector's Blog 
Good points to remind home owners of. Anyone that has seen a cat that claws furniture, or even their cat tree, has seen the damage that can occur over time.
I wrote a post over on my blog about inspecting crawlspaces that the homeowners let their dogs and cats roam in. It’s never a good thing, and they wonder why their house smells when the animals are defecating on the plastic.