Fun in the attic

[pdxfj]

I live in a house that was built in 1946.  Very little has been done to it over the years and it's about 80% original since the day it was built.  There is no insulation in the walls, and what is in the attic does not count as any kind of insulation.

It is a finished attic that runs the length of the house.  There are of course two unfinished areas.  I was able to put in about 350 sq/ft of R30 in half of the attic space since there's an access door.  The other half has no access and a small closet splitting up the unfinished area.

So the time comes to cut into the walls of the closet to gain access to an area of the house no one has been in since 1946 or so.  Holes cut, my father ready to cut lengths of R30 and hand them to me, I find one rather disturbing issue.

At the far end of the house about 20 feet from where I cut into the wall I see something.. my gut says it is nothing good..after I lay down some plywood to walk on I'm presented with the largest Wasp nest I've ever seen.  My father has a few choice words about my objection to the nest (wimp, pussy, etc).  That is until he goes the 20 feet in the confined space to see for himself.

Even the exterminator that came out to spray the nest said "Holy SHIT" when she realized just how massive it is.

Picture below is the nest.  The bulging areas under the original insulation (black/grey stuff) are more dormant wasps.  I am hoping that they did not find some small hole into the wall below that would require me to cut into the outside of the house.

Clean up will be this weekend with my 5hp shop vac and a friend who's crazy enough to do the work.. well.. some cash helps as well.. I'll post more pics later as things get cleaned up.

[racerman_27410]

WOW..... you are very lucky they are dormant this time of year.

the good thing is you are going to get them all out so the odds of them rebuilding the nest in the spring are greatly reduced.

with a house that old i would bet they have been coming in and out thru a hole in the wood where a knot fell out.

[bugboy]

Looks like some knee pads and a couple of fly-swatters would be all you need for that  

We had wasp problems at our transmitter building in Hawaii.  Couldn't get anyone out there to take care of it so I crawled up on the ledge between the 1st and 2nd floor to an overhang/shelf type deal.  Crawled along the overhang on my hands and knees with 2 cans of wasp spray.  Get to a nest, hose down with both cans/hands,,,, and then "duck and cover"!! I could feel the dying wasps hitting me but got no stings.  Probably did 8-10 nests that way. I wish I was still young and stupid,,,, it makes for fun adventures.

[Klavdy]

You could always get Dean over for a fun filled vacation.

[grannyknot]

When your brave friend finishes the job and turns off the shopvac make sure he has something handy to
plug up the end of the hose, BTDT

[tmkaos]

<Shudder> 

My first job out of school was installing fire alarms.. I went to a girls Catholic Boarding School to to install an alarm in one of the dorms, and the Head Matron  said to me before I went up into the roof space "Be careful, we had a wasp problem last year  but we have had the roof cavity sprayed"..
Anyway, first thing I noticed when I put my head through the hatch was all the wooden beams had nicely rounded edges, which I thought was an unusual amount of detail for a dorm building built at the begining of the century. 2 minutes later at the opposite end of the cavity I discovered a nest built into the corner of the roofline as it ran into the gutter, approximately half a meter in diameter and nearly 1.5 m tall.. It was totally dead, the exterminators had done their job, but I still crapped myself... The most amazing thing was the wasps had taken about 5mm off the corners of every piece of timber in that roof space to create their nest.. I wish I'd had a camera with me.... 

Good luck with getting the little buggers cleaned up!!

James

[pdxfj]

Clean up was rather uneventful.  Thankfully things are well built and there does not seem to be any way for them to get into the interior walls.  I can see all the way to the exterior soffit and no sign of them having built anything in it.  Managed to get 99% of the holes to the outside filled in with expanding spray foam, but I have to get the last ones from outside with calk. 

There were only bits and pieces of the wasps left.  The exterminator said they would go nuts after being sprayed and attack each other.  Finally making it to the queen and rip her to bits.  She wasn't kidding. 

My friend does not have a whole lot of money so I paid him well for his time and he's using the cash to get Christmas presents for his kids.