Cat crap contains various diseases which can be transmitted to humans. Most of them are just annoying, but a brother got an infection in his hands while gardening that caused major swelling in his hands. It was a good deal more than annoying.

Cat crap didn’t phase me at all, even though we had cats and they were well known to spend time under the house. Spiders, on the other hand… [shudder].

My father made me crawl under a house and do plumbing when I was a teenager. I hate spiders. Me and spiders don’t coexist peacefully. We did not get along, not at all, both of us trying to occupy the same space where the plumbing existed. Ever since then, if anything requires crawling under a house, I call a professional.

Spiders. Ick.

I try a couple of doses of Draino before going to a wire snake, and if that doesn’t work I go with new pipes. Of course if it requires crawling more than 50 feet under a house, it’s time for a plumber.

I get a lot of parts from the local Ace Hardware, the one local place willing to order parts they don’t have in stock, and parts that fit old houses.

Regarding galvanized pipe, I’m surprised you still have any. It had a rated lifespan of twenty years, meaning that all the galvanized pipe around here long since rotted away and has been replaced with copper. That said, there’s plenty of plumbing issues where I would also say “let the plumber do it”. Either for safety’s sake (I am *not* getting up on the roof and running a plumbing snake down the main stack at my age!) or because the fitting I’m looking at looks more fragile than I’m interested in messing with.

In education and and consulting it is called ‘assumed knowledge’ as in you expect high school graduates to be familiar with algebra, but that ‘ain’t necessarily so’. It also occurs in interviews at crime scenes where it slips peoples’ minds that they had seen someone at the scene covered in blood spatters and carrying a baseball bat.

(because it had almost disassembled itself)

Good one, Shirt. I’m going to use that one on the next housewreck I come across. It disassembled itself. Like that.