Crawl Space Cleanout in Boise: How the Junk Gets Out

The hatch in that Bench house had been painted shut so long the owner figured it was decorative. It took a putty knife and some swearing to get it open. That's a pretty normal start to a crawl space cleanout in Boise.

Under it, sitting in the dirt, was a cast iron bathtub. Somebody slid it under the house during a remodel because that beat carrying it out the front door, and it had been there about thirty years.

Nobody decides to store things under their house. It piles up one shortcut at a time, and then everyone forgets.

What ends up down there

Old ductwork, more than anything. When a furnace gets swapped, the installer runs new flex and leaves the old sheet metal lying in the dirt. Dead weight nobody wanted to deal with.

Insulation is next. Batts sag out of the joists over time, especially in North End houses where the wire hangers rusted through decades ago. Once it's on the ground it's filthy and usually chewed up.

Then the construction leftovers. Cut ends of pipe, chunks of concrete from a footing pour, scrap lumber, a bucket of hardened thinset. Builders out in the Ten Mile corridor and around Nampa weren't always careful about what got swept in before the subfloor went on.

And the stuff people put there on purpose. Boxes, canning jars, camping gear, a rolled up carpet left over from a flooring job. Storing anything in a crawl space is a bad idea, but people do it constantly because the space is right there.

Why a crawl space cleanout in Boise takes longer than an attic

Everything has to come out through one hole, and that hole is usually about 18 by 24 inches.

That's really the whole story. A bathtub doesn't fit through an 18 inch opening, so it gets cut into pieces small enough to pass through, on your back, in the dirt, working off a headlamp. Same with long duct runs and sheets of old plywood.

Clearance is the other half of it. Most Treasure Valley crawl spaces give you two to three feet, and piers, girders and plumbing chop that into a maze. You don't carry anything down there. You drag it, slide it, and hand it up to whoever's kneeling at the hatch.

Curbside junk removal is often done in under an hour. A crawl space almost never is. Figure a few hours, and a full day if the space runs the whole footprint of the house and it's packed tight.

Heads up: Before you call anybody, pop the hatch and shoot a few phone photos with the flash on. You don't have to go in. A picture of the opening and whatever sits within ten feet of it tells us more than five minutes of description, and it makes the estimate faster and a lot closer to real.

What we'll haul and what needs somebody else first

Debris is our lane. Old ducts, fallen insulation, torn vapor barrier, lumber, boxes, whatever got stashed, and yes, the occasional dead critter that rides out with a load. Most of it goes to the Ada County landfill, and the metal duct gets recycled instead.

Where we stop is contamination. Standing sewage from a failed line, heavy mold on the joists, an active rodent problem nobody has dealt with yet. That's a remediation job, not a hauling job.

Yes, we'd like the work. But calling a restoration outfit first saves you money. They handle the contained part, we come clear the bulk once it's safe to handle, and you pay once instead of twice.

Pest control is the same deal. Get the mice out and the entry points sealed before anyone hauls the nesting material, or you'll be back down there within a season.

What a crawl space cleanout in Boise costs, and when to book it

Pricing is by volume, meaning how much truck space your debris actually fills. Access is the other piece. A generous hatch with a straight shot to the pile is a different job than a 30 inch crawl with three turns and a water line in the way.

The estimate is free and we do it on site, because guessing at a crawl space over the phone helps nobody. You get a firm price before anything gets touched, and it doesn't move after.

As for timing, here's the surprise. Summer is fine. An attic in July will cook you, but a crawl space sits in shade and dirt and stays cool even when it's 98 in Meridian.

Spring is the one to watch. Snowmelt and early irrigation can push water under houses in low spots around Star, Kuna and parts of Caldwell. Clearing the junk is still worth doing, but fix the drainage or you'll be back.

Winter works too. The ground is frozen up top, the crawl space stays above freezing, and our calendar is lighter, so it's usually easy to get a slot within a few days.

Bottom line

Most crawl spaces hold more than the owner thinks, and the work goes slower than it looks from the hatch. It isn't complicated. It's just awkward, and it's a whole lot easier when somebody else is the one lying in the dirt.

Want a look at what's under your house and a real number to go with it? Give us a call at (208) 593-2877. Happy to swing by, open the hatch, and tell you straight what you're dealing with.