Last week we told you of the terrible smell polluting our office space. We called the building management company to have the problem investigated. They sent some "handymen" over to snoop out and clean-up the smell.
After much strolling around, sniffing the air, cracks, crevices, and duct-work, these brilliant minds concluded there was no source from inside. I insisted that 4 employees abandoning the office suggests otherwise and that they would be best advised to keep looking into a solution.
From there, they approached the front of the building by my desk. One of them spotted a beautiful circular hole cut out of the floor and bent down to sniff from the hole. I've never seen one of these guys move so fast in my life. He leaped up and backward with a shout of surprise and disgust.
"I found it," he declared! "It's coming from right here - under there!" And he gagged and choked again from the awful stench.
This got them digging up the ancient hardwood floors to get at the source.
Cutting the floor out where he smelled through a hole, they tried to look underneath to see what was there. Unable to see much, they started pulling the insulation out from between the floor joists. Seeing that the floor joists ran from my desk toward the door, they dug up another chunk of floor (photo) right inside the front door.
Watch your step when you come visit. We found we can easily convert it to a trap door. ;)
Once they had the two ends of their 'tunnel' open now, they were trying to glimpse in without getting their heads
too far into the stench under the floorboards. It was a little awkward, and no doubt eerie, to stick your head through this small hole in the floor. And who knows what you'd find. I had the camera with me, and I wanted to see too, so I volunteered the camera's services. Have a look.
Not finding anything from one end or the other, the debate continued about the source of the offending odour. They insisted they must have eliminated it by removing the insulation batting. I wasn't convinced and need much more convincing. With the floors in the condition they were now in, I suggested prying a little further over the other direction to investigate along another section of floor joists.
Pulling up another section along the door, more insulation was pulled out. This time there was a slightly longer pause. The camera went down for a photograph and came back with another section of insulation further along. There appeared to be a shadow requiring a closer look. Seeing this image, I suspect the small rodents have been tunneling along underneath the insulation.
Standing back to let them dig around more, one of the guys stopped, grabbed a long-handled scraper and reach in to carefully lift something out. Here is what he found.
Along the bottom edge is the spinal cord. Where the spinal cord reaches the right-most end of this lump, you can make out the hind-leg, and the long slender hind foot and toes. This little creature didn't smell, as you can see it had been picked clean for a considerable time now. Nonetheless, it was a gross and fascinating find all the same.
With all that effort, we didn't find anything else. We eliminated the carcass we did find, a couple sections of floor were torn up, the insulation pulled out and disposed of, and with the cold weather and windows and doors wide open all day, we couldn't tell if there was a smell anymore.
Along with all this fun, when they began the job they started using their industrial vacuum cleaner to clean up after themselves. Unfortunately, there is a trick issue with this shop-vac; the filter falls off quite often. The very first time they turned it on, the exhaust spewed enormous clouds of fine dust everywhere inside the building.
Note the footprints in the photo. We'd just had the whole office cleaned the day before. With such fine dust it had the floor so evenly coated, photography would have difficulty conveying the extent of the mess. Then, I saw the footprints.
Without anything further to be done today, I sent them packing with specific instructions to return the next day to clean up the mess.
The boys have been working hard on furthering the development of the XLsuite product. As with every worthwhile goal, we have our bumps and obstacles on our road to success. This past week, we got to participate in presenting a couple of new Verticals launched with the XLsuite back-end.
