The best meth remediators do this...

So we are well on our way to completing a heavy summer schedule of meth remediations, but the most memorable recently was a job we got - and then didn't get.

It's funny, I find that the one best way for me to "sell" a caller on what we do is to just talk to them. I don't sell at all, and just try to help them understand what's happening, what the results mean that they may already have and what's in store for them.

I did that just recently and sure enough, I got the call a couple of days later that let me know we had the job. As per standard procedure, I texted my partner to let him know it was time to move forward. That was a thursday. By friday, we received word that we had lost the job because they hadn't received word that we were moving forward with the project. Actually we had - the number I had texted my partner went to voice mail three times, and an attempt at texting that number also failed. It seems that there was supposed to be a system on the other side that let the client know when they missed a call at work. Didn't happen.

So I offered to reduce my fee by a bit to cover the additional rent costs, but it was too late. They had selected someone else. I do hope they selected someone who knows what he's doing - there are a lot of sharks and pretenders out there.

But what I did learn is that referring projects to my partner isn't enough. When I get a signal to go, I need to go on it myself. I should have made that call to the homeowner.

Funny how when we go to a doctor's office, we're more concerned about his bedside manner than his technical capacity. And when we need a meth remediator? It's about timeliness of that first phone call. It's about customer service, no matter what business we're in.

I'll do better next time we get that "go ahead" notice

Yeah - that's impossible

So apparently we have some sort of cross connection with nature when we do meth projects. I have already written about a ghostly house in Salt Lake City where we were haunted by bees and assorted apparitions - but at least that experience can be explained by unhappy ghosts.

Not the case this time.

So the legal definition of what can remain in the home is defined in state law. It says that an item must be "smooth and easily cleanable". This is of course up to a good deal of interpretation. Appliances and chandeliers meet this definition without question. I've left acoustic ceiling tiles in place on various projects and not had a problem. But on this home we had a problem. The basement ceiling had insulation in it - over that there was a healthy sheet of plastic sheeting. I figured that if anything is smooth and easily cleanable, it would be plastic sheeting. The county disagreed when I called to verify.

So - at the last minute on the project we pull down the insulation. It wasn't entertaining. So as the stuff comes down we discover these huge bees - larger than bumble bees, these things look like they came from some deep jungle corner of the globe where only the baddest critters can survive.

How did these beasts get so large? How did they get inside the house? Why were they nesting inside the house? Did they get that large on the meth? How many more were in the home and how many of those were going to be alive? And how quickly were we going to die after they decided we were unwelcome in their nest?

These sorts of questions were high in our minds as we went through the routine of just another meth remediation.

By the way, we didn't get any answers on these monsters - but we are alive to write about it - so that's good.

Yeah - that one was haunted

Yeah - that one was haunted

So we’re working on this home in Salt Lake City. At first glance it’s a pretty cool home - it’s in one of the older neighborhoods, tons of personality to the area. The front door to this place is vintage 1920 and inside it has those gorgeous hardwood floors that older homes have. Then there’s the ornate-ness that you often get in those craftsman homes, and the cool features that you only get from homes of that era. The home was really not trashed, bringing doubts at first as to whether it really was contaminated.

But yeah - it was. 

So we didn’t really have to yank out carpets in this one - the place was all hardwood. That was nice. What wasn’t so nice was there was a big fat bee in there that kept coming after my partner. Of course he’s doing the heavy lifting and this bee is bugging him. Finally he is able to lock it in the bathroom and move forward with what he’s doing. I go in the bathroom a bit later - no bee.No escape.

So I blew that off and work continued. Working now in the basement, he has his headphones on listing to tunes. All of the sudden he gets this high pitched screech in his headphones and a smack to the side of his head that left a bruise.. Wasn’t me - I can’t hit that hard.

So what do you do? That was a bit eery, but there’s a job to do so we keep working. A minute later and the basement door slams. Hard. We go up to see if there’s someone upstairs or open windows/doors. Nuttin. Apparently something doesn’t want us there. 

Then we find out from the neighbors that “weird” things have been happening in that home. I didn’t ask, but I’m sure that whatever weird things may have happened were probably - yeah. Weird. 

Hey, it’s a paycheck, right? They smacked my buddy around a bit, but in the end, we decontaminated the place. We’ll see if we decontaminated the poltergeists. 

The living room to the place. The window was interesting and the floor was awesome. At least the ghost had good taste for places to hang out

Grisly Garage

We're working on this place in Midvale and like most of the projects we've seen lately, this place just has its own feel to it. It's a house that got turned into a tri-plex, with a laundry located to the west side. Rumor has it that a couple of girls got high on heroine in the laundry room and died there fairly recently. The way the story was told my buddy, it sounds like a third person survived.

The home is in a very dicey neighborhood, filled with broken down trailers and ratty yards. Then you get to this home, located at the end of the neighborhood, and the neighbors were complaining about what was going on here. Sometimes it really does make me wonder why I do this - it's a weird kind of adventure I get into sometimes.

So Salt Lake County does not require that I clean out the garage - they only require that the living space be decontaminated. That's a good thing because there has been a pit bull guarding that garage - even when nobody is theoretically living in the place. Oh, and the garage? It's nasty. My buddy thinks there's a body in there. It stinks like a mix between something like feces and a rotting carcass. That will be somebody else's adventure though. We ain't going in there.

There's just some things I won't do

Needles in your fingernails

I just started a new meth project, this one in Orem. The owner is a guy who has done a good deal of business with me over the years - he’s a mortgage agent.

So this is a condo, on the bottom level of an 8-unit building. I’ll explain why that ‘s important in a minute. The client had been having problems with this client and had asked me earlier to go sample the home for meth. It came up positive all right - the lab result was 68 for the sample set of 3 locations. That’s bad. It might have been a lab. 

So now the client walks up to the door to get these guys out of the house and tells them they have a 3 hour time period to be gone. There are other individuals in the home, and they’re living there too. He tells them to get out and this big tattooed dude walks up to him and says “you can’t do that - I have squatter’s rights”. 

Squatter’s rights? Apparently yes, there is such a thing. They have to be given 3 days notice to move out of a place they should never entered in the first place. That’s just insane. Who’s running this country?

So they get a cop, who tells them they can either have their 3 days and then get arrested, or just get out. They choose plan B, then they get a few minutes again. The client told me they were throwing stuff out the window (computers, etc), but not moving quickly. I found out why later. 

Turns out that while they were showing themselves to be moving out quickly, they were also burying their drugs and paraphernalia. We go in there after they’re out and get started on the project. One of the major steps to dealing with a meth contaminated home is to “clean” the HVAC system. As we’re going after the ducts, we find needles, syringes, spoons, and other stuff. Turns out they had some black tar heroine stuff in there. I’m too naive to even know what that is, but someone else identified it for me. 

Imagine the joy of having to clean out heat registers, only to be greeted by needles that were shoved in there. Yeah - that’s what I do.