Neil's Meccano And Stuff
The Wasp Nest
During our early years in this house we noticed that we had more wasps coming inside the house than seemed normal. We found an active wasp nest in a dead tree stump in the front garden and sorted that out but this did not noticeably reduce the number of wasps in the house.
Ours is a large dorma bungalow and as such it has triangular section crawl spaces behind the upstairs walls.There was one opening into the crawl space which runs along the front of the house and one opening into the crawl space running along the back of the house.
These crawl spaces were not places that you often venture into because you have to crawl from rafter to rafter to avoid putting a foot through the eaves of the house. The crawl spaces are very cramped and a haven for spiders - I don't like spiders.
In more recent years I have been in the crawl spaces quite a bit, laying partial flooring in them and using them when running cables or reinforcing behind plasterboard walls in order to hang new radiators in the upstairs bedrooms - but in the early days I avoided them as far as possible.
Here is a view down one of the crawl spaces.
You can see a (pink) lagged water pipe on the left, which is behind the bedroom wall and you can see the slope of the roof on the right.
Power cables run along the joists.
One day I ventured into the front crawl space to run a new cable along the length of the house. There I was, crawling from rafter to rafter when I looked right down to the other end of the triangle - further in than I had needed to go before.
I could faintly see what I thought was a big bag of rubbish, left by the 1965 builders. "Bloody Cowboys" I cursed unfairly and continued to crawl towards it, torch in hand.
I am just slightly short-sighted and when I was about twenty feet from the rubbish bag, my heart suddenly jumped. It was not a rubbish bag but a truly massive wasp nest - with me stuck in a crawl space barely bigger than I was and with no easy way out. The potential danger of my position only sank in later but suffice to say that I immediately began to quietly crawl backwards, out of the space and back into the master bedroom (where the front crawl space is accessed through the airing cupboard). I replaced the vertical trap door and shakily explained what I had seen to the rest of the family.
So I went online and searched for 'Giant Wasp Nest'. This returned loads of images of home owners with a nest the size of a large football. "Call that 'Giant'? - I could fit half a dozen of those into my wasp nest!"
It was Winter and the articles I read online all told me that a nest should now be empty. They went on to say that the nest could possibly be safely tackled now, along with stories of people who had done just that - and just one guy in the States who thought his nest was empty but then got stung to death - hmmm.
I also read a piece saying that if there were spider webs near the nest, then it was probably empty - not quite an exact science.
My lovely wife Grace told me to ring the council and a quick look online told me that they would tackle the nest for a couple of hundred pounds - "a couple of hundred pounds" - the idea started to hatch in my mind that this could be another DIY job!
The nest was behind the plasterboard wall in our daughter's bedroom, inside a built-in storage unit and there was no access to the crawl-space there. Even I am not daft enough to crawl all the way down from the master bedroom and risk being stuck in that triangle with the wasps, unable to even turn around. What was needed, was a new trap door, right in front of the wasp nest.
Here is the space under the storage unit in our daughter's room - it is still a tight space but I can very quickly jump out and into the bedroom.
Inside the space, that wall on the right is the one which has the nest behind it.
I pondered, that if I had a professional in to tackle the nest, then they would still need to cut through this wall and so I might as well do this stage myself because I would make a tidy job of it and because it would make any subsequent nest-removal work cheaper. At least, this was what I told my wife...but (of course) I'd already decided I was doing the whole job myself.
So, I decided to tackle it the next morning.
Here is the plaster board wall inside the storage unit.The wall on the left is the brick gable-end of the house.
I figured out a plan and was almost looking forward to the adventure that the next day would bring.
I got all my tools together and put on my special safety outfit. My jeans were tucked into my socks, my sweatshirt tucked into my jeans, my sleeves tucked into my gloves and taped, a balaclava tucked into my shirt and finally safety goggles - very little skin showed. I told my protesting family what I was going to do and that they should be ready if they heard me shout. I shut the bedroom door and went to work by drilling a hole in each corner of the wall.
No wasps came out of the 4 holes. I banged hard on the wall and still no wasps came out - this had to be a good sign.
WIth an electric saw, I began to join the 4 holes but left some of the line uncut - I did not want this new trap door falling out before I was absolutely ready for it. At this stage I had wide tape ready to put over the 4 holes if wasps had started pouring out.
I needed a way to put the cut panel back in very quickly if something went wrong. This would be a panic moment and my solution had to be fool-proof - I'd have no time to think if the worst happened.
On each corner, I screwed a square of plywood to the removable part of the cut panel. Now I could push this panel straight back in place without it falling right through.
Here I have fitted a plywood square on each corner but the cuts are not yet joined together, which would free the cut panel to lift out.
Heartbeat increasing steadily but still no sounds of wasps despite the noise and vibration of the electric saw - I was hopeful that the nest was empty, as the Internet suggested it should be.
I drilled a small hole in the centre, so I could put my finger in to get a grip on the cut panel and pull it outwards, then I joined up the saw cuts.
This was it - take a deep breath and pull out the cut panel, being ready to slam it back into the hole....
...and there it was. The specks are not wasps but bits and pieces caught in spider webs.
I recalled what I had read online - if there are spiders, then there are probably no wasps.
Was this even true though? I had never heard before, that spiders did not like wasps.
It was quite a beautiful thing, in a scary way. I had brought a hand saw in with me and used this to gently tap the nest, ready to slam the trap door back in place.
Still nothing - surely it was empty?
I gently began to saw into the nest, cutting it into chunks which filled around 3 black bin liners.
...and there it was gone!
I did not see even a single wasp - not even a dead one. Perhaps it had been unused for years.
I sprayed the whole area with bleach and fitted the new trap door properly, to give easy access at any time.
A big sigh of relief followed - and an even bigger glass of whisky!