Dirty Jobs

Mike begins this show at a "sick" fifty year old house in Santa Cruz, CA. Humidity and rainfall wreak havoc on wooden structures like this house which causes mold, mildew and dry rot. We meet Mark and his son, Greg Van Meter. These guys make homes more energy efficient. This actually is Greg's house. It used to be Mark's house and once was his grandfather's house.



The house has been sick for about twenty years. When they turn on the heater it blows a lot of dust into the house which draws from the fiberglass in the ceiling. They end up breathing a lot of fiberglass. Plus they used to have about two dozen rats living in the ceiling and they can still smell what's left of the rats as well.



Mark and Greg have set up a duct blaster. It pressurizes the duct system and shows where the leaks are. It can tell where the warm air is going (up into the attic or outside) instead of into the house. They have a manometer which checks the leakage in pascals (a unit designed to measure pressure) or cubic feet per minute. They will pressurize the duct system then blow air from the duct blaster into the duct system. They have all the air registers covered with tape. When the air tries to escape out of the the supply registers in the home, it's trapped in so they'll see where the air goes.



They turn the duct blaster on and Mark explains that they want one side of the manometer to read 25. Mike compares the process to fixing a flat tire. You inflate it to see where the leaks are - except this is a house. Mike begins reading off numbers from the manometer and has no idea what any of it means. Mark tries to translate. He says the duct system is leaking 167 cubic feet per minute. Mike says that sounds like a lot. Mark agrees. He thinks this heater can push 800 cubic feet per minute so they are losing 20% (or about a quarter of the heat) to the air. They want that leakage under 60 cubic feet per minute.



To fix the leaks, they are going under the house to do some work. We meet Mike and Jake who will help. Everyone is suited up and ready to go. We watch the cameramen crawl under the house first. To cure the house, the crew first need to remove any dead animals, fallen insulation, fecal matter and rocks from underneath the house. They'll then seal the ducts, electrical lines and plumbing with insulating foam. They'll lay a plastic sheeting material down between the pillars to create a vapor barrier that will prevent the growth of mold. Finally, they'll seal that together with a gooey substance called mastic.



They start in the back corner. You can easily see all the insulation falling down that needs to be removed. It's also not a question of whether or not there is mold, but a matter of just where the mold is. Greg points out a big area of mold spores. Mike seems to have found a rat skeleton. They push everything behind them closer to the garbage bags at the entrance. They also take a foam gun to the mud sill and seal all around it to prevent infiltration from the outside.



Mike thinks Greg should either be dead or a superhero for all the toxins he's breathed in doing this job. He figures the guys are either shaving years off their lives or have built up a lot of immunity. They push forward the plastic sheeting material and mastic. They need to remove anything that can puncture the sheeting so it doesn't ruin their barrier. Somehow Mike got a mouthful of insulation.



Using a large putty knife, Mike spreads mastic along the wall and presses the plastic up to it. The mastic should work like glue although with the dampness underneath the house it generally takes 2-3 days to solidify. Once it does it will be like cement. Greg thinks Mike is doing a great job and asks him to join the crew. He readily declines. They run plastic around the pillars and attach it to the mastic. With one done, they have twenty more pillars to do.



After commenting on the rat poo on their masks (which they say is better than cat crap) the guys talk about the turnover in this job. They've brought one guy to tears and have had at least three people that didn't last longer than a month. Basically people need the money, but not bad enough to do this job. Mike asks if any of the guys went to college and he starts laughing when he hears they all did. They actually were roommates in college studying philosophy.



Mike is thankful to get out from under the crawlspace. He shows a photo of what the finished job looks like which takes 3-4 days to complete. It looks nice and clean. Next they're going to work on the attic. There they expect to find rat poo, urine and loose blown in insulation. They think some rats may have passed away in a rat nest in back. Mike crawls in and starts grabbing the top layer (the poo layer) of insulation. Mike is overwhelmed by the layer of poo and how horrible this job is.



Mike can't crawl over the guys in such a cramped space so he suggests that he load up the brush with mastic and pass it over. He also cuts some fiberglass tape that helps the mastic stick to the bare surface of pipes. They end up knocking down some sort of pipe which needs to be fixed before they can apply the mastic. The air is full of particulate and everyone is getting cranky, so they get out of the attic (and the house) fairly quickly.



Mike's next job takes him to a snowy Kensington, MN on the first day of spring. He's at the Oakdale farm to learn about turkey insemination. Paul and Dana are fifth generation owners of this turkey farm. They are in a room full of male turkeys who eat corn and soybean meal. Mike fills up buckets of food for the birds and gives each pen a pail and a half of feed. They restrict the feed so the birds don't get too heavy. Heavier turkeys lose their semen production earlier. These turkeys are about 65 pounds each.



Artificial insemination needs to be done because turkeys have a hard time reproducing naturally. They've been bred so large that their breasts are too big to mate properly. We learn that these birds are a day and a half from being slaughtered. Mike tries to reassure the birds that everything is fine. Before they start obtaining semen from the birds, Dana squeezes a turkey. Their breasts are full of air to make them look bigger and the squeeze makes them emit a big burplike sound.



First they corner some of the birds. When the birds are marked with purple on the back, that bird isn't producing semen anymore. They generally are done once a week, sometimes twice a week. Birds that don't look healthy aren't bred. They pick up a bird and clamp the feet down so the bird is upside down on a lighted table. Paul shows Mike where the poo comes out. It's at this point that Paul puts a tube in his mouth and Mike realizes that he intends to suck the semen out of the bird.



The semen actually goes into a jar and the tube in Paul's mouth creates the suction. He does a pinch and a squeeze and collects the semen. The possibility of the semen going down his throat is very slim. Extender is added and the semen is taken right away to the hen barn. They use the semen as they go. It needs to be used right away because it doesn't keep. Paul squeezes the butt shut because he doesn't want poo in the semen. The males technically don't have a penis. If they were to mate naturally, the male would literally drop the semen onto the female's oviduct. Mike gets the chance to do the job himself. He grabs the turkeys and plops them onto the table. He has trouble squeezing the bird so Paul squeezes and Mike sucks. He's not having an easy time with this job.



Next they take the semen to the hens. There are about 3000 birds in this house. Mike doesn't think he has enough semen for 3000 birds. Waving flags, the guys herd the birds to the opposite end of the henhouse. The ones that are squatting down and refuse to move don't want to go because they want to mate. They need to put the flag over the squatting hen's head to get it to move. Finally they get all the birds to the end of the pen behind a net.



We meet Mike and Cory who take Mike's vial of semen and put it in the inseminating machine. They do the birds once a week. The machine counts every bird they do, which is about 600 an hour. They always work as a team. One guy grabs the bird by the legs and hands it over to his partner who is sitting down. The other guy obtains a sample of sperm from the machine and puts the hen upside down between his legs. He squeezes, finds the oviduct hole and inserts the tube wth the sperm. They show Mike the difference between the poo hole and the oviduct and give him a chance at the job.



When the hen has two bones near the oviduct and it's too hard to squeeze, she has quit laying eggs and they have to let her go. Mike would like to give her some sort of parting gift, but the guys say no. There is poo and semen flying all over the place and he's not enjoying it. Then Mike gets a chance to grab the birds. He's not very good at that either. Pee and poo is still flying all over. Mike finally has had enough with the flying fluids and leaves the guys to their messy job.



Within a week or so, each hen will lay about five eggs. Every hour the automatic nest pushes the eggs onto a conveyor belt where the eggs will be collected and sent to a hatchery. 93% of these eggs will end up fertilized.



Finally, Mike opens up the mailbag and reads a letter from Judy who wants to know if Mike is a violent person. She says Mike seems nice, but it appears that he has a propensity for violence. He loves to smash things. We meet Sebastian who smashes cars for a living. He loves his job. He has a huge machine called a bailer that holds 750 tons. Stuff is thrown in and gets smushed. He just turned a 1988 Buick LeSabre into a small square of metal. Next he's going to smash a Cadillac. Mike wants to make sure there's not a body in the car first.



A crane picks up the car and plops it into the bailer. Buttons are pushed and the machine starts to squish. What remains is pushed out from the bottom in a tight little rectangle. It will be taken to a steel mill where it will probably be melted down and made into another car.