Im one of those dumbasses who enjoys being a plumber. I like being the fix it guy. I take pride in being one of the ones who comes to fix it when you cant, or wont. Lot of times it puts me in places like this. The left side of the photo is my ingress/egress. Im about 10-12’ inside at this point. Tunnel continues straight behind me about 6’, then hangs a Louie, and dead ends about 12’ past the direction change. This is how you move water/drain and gas lines when some rich asshole wants to move the sink and cooktop from a wall to the middle of the kitchen because island sinks/cooktops are in fashion here.

Tunnel work makes me leery, and ive been doing this for a couple decades now. Its one of the few things where safety guidelines and best practices are wadded up and thrown out the door. You arent getting a trench box under a slab, stepping/sloping a tunnel would take such wide steps that you would compromise the slab due to undermining so much dirt. This is a relatively short one, not that length of tunnel really matters as i still probably wouldnt make it out if something went tits up. Ive done maybe 1200 tunnel jobs, and after every single job im grateful i come out again. And i dont even have the hard job. The real hard job is the poor bastards who come dig the tunnels i need dug so rich assholes can have island sinks. The company i call for my tunneling has had two guys die in tunnel collapse two years ago.

I should learn to code instead. Code cant collapse and kill you in an instant.

  • MattsAlt [comrade/them]
    hexbear
    14
    2 months ago

    I never even considered that people with slabs could do this. I'd probably quit when I saw one for the first time

    rat-salute-2

    • Feinsteins_Ghost [he/him]
      hexagon
      hexbear
      10
      2 months ago

      When i first started plumbing my journeyman took me on my first tunnel job about two months into apprenticeship. He said I’d know in my own head, whether or not i wanted to be a career plumber after my first tunnel job, and that everything else was easy compared to that.

  • Tunnelvision [they/them]
    hexbear
    14
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    Feel this post hard mane. HVAC was my first trade that I did out of highschool and I did it until I just couldn’t take the heat anymore. Now I do cnc so I can at least be inside, but like any trade I hate the long hours since I feel like I wasted my life fixing shit for people or making stuff so people can keep pumping oil out of the ground. Good on you for doing the work no one wants to do but always needs to be done.

  • Nationalgoatism [he/him]
    hexbear
    13
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    My family has included a lot of miners, especially in the older generations. Every one of them who has worked underground has insane stories to tell. I'm glad I don't personally, and that I work at heights instead. Thank you for your service

    • Dessa [she/her]
      hexbear
      7
      2 months ago

      I have thought about the Nutty Putty incident every single day since I have heard of it. It haunts me

        • emizeko [they/them]
          hexbear
          4
          2 months ago

          (cw: guy takes a really long time to die while upside down in a tiny cave tube after several rescue attempts fail) https://cavehaven.com/nutty-putty-cave-accident/

  • CrackBurger [none/use name]
    hexbear
    10
    2 months ago

    I take pride in being one of the ones who comes to fix it when you cant, or wont.

    Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do

  • emizeko [they/them]
    hexbear
    5
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    read the title, and for a minute I thought you were Hamas