Veterans Green Jobs, Week 4

With Christmas two weeks away, here’s a festive picture of Denver City Hall at night. To get you all in the mood for some a-wassailing.

At VGJ this week, I got to go out every day with the weatherizing crews.  A great break from the warehouse and a really interesting job.  All the houses we visited (about six this week) needed more insulation in the attic, so a big part of my week was spent grinding insulation in the back of the truck. (All the other jobs needed some sort of know-how, so I was in the truck).  Step into my office:

1. Bags of insulation.  Basically shredded newspaper, vacuum sealed into 30lb bricks.  Each attic used about 50 bags.
2. The insulation grinder.  You open the bags, and dump ‘em in.  A blower in the bottom of the grinder pushes the insulation fluff through a long hose (#4)
3. Big-ass generator.  (It’s behind the fan).  Powers the grinder.
4. Hose to the attic. 

Since you’re in the confined space of the truck, essentially throwing big blocks of dust into a wood chipper, it gets pretty messy.

We also insulated walls, a ceiling, hot water heaters, doors, air ducts, and crawl-spaces.  I could insulate my way out of a strait-jacket.  (That doesn’t make any sense, but whatever...) Want me to Mastic the roof-to-joist? Want me to collar a flu vent? Want me to Tyzol the swamp cooler?  Want me to run the blower-door?  Well, if you have a truck full of all those things, I totally could. (…En route to a badass strait-jacket escape.)

All the people we met doing the weatherizing were really grateful, and it was a rewarding week being able to see exactly what a great program the warehouse is going to help support.   On one hand, it could be a great job, helping people every day.  On the other hand, one of the guys I worked with had a story about finding 90 dead cats in a crawl-space on his first day of work.  I think my dead-cat-threshold is too low to do weatherizing full-time, no matter how thankful the clients are. (As a side note, I do know where they send those cats’ pelts. Just f.y.i.)

Not a whole lot new or exciting this week, so I’ll end on this.  We had to turn in a “personal reflection” on our first project earlier this week.  Lots of people wrote poems or drew pictures.  Here’s mine.

Our nasty cafeteria is called Machebeuf hall. I ate a lot of Cholula there this round.   It’s pretty deep.

Anyway, only ONE week left at VGJ before all the other teams get back to campus and we all go on Christmas break.  Paradise/ Xanadu/ Eden/ Spokane, you never sounded so good…