Rant: Just hit 500 attic crawls this year and my knees are screaming

I was adding up my service tickets from January and the number hit 500 exactly, which means I've been in a hot, cramped attic 500 times since New Year's. It really hit me how much wear that puts on your body over time. What's the best knee pad you guys have found for old houses with uneven joists?

4 comments

4 Comments

taylorknight17d ago

That number is a gut punch for sure. My own knees started making sounds like a bowl of rice krispies after about half that many crawls. Gel-pro straps are the move, like nathanking said. They're the only thing that doesn't slide off a gnarly, slanted joist when you're trying to shimmy past a duct. The real trick is learning to sort of roll onto your knee instead of just plopping down, but my coordination for that vanishes after the first hour in the heat.

fionalopez15h ago

Totally get what you mean about the coordination vanishing. I was a hard cap guy for years, swore by them. Then I spent a week crawling over a mess of old, uneven joists wrapped in that brittle old insulation. The hard caps kept catching and throwing me off balance. Finally tried a strapped gel pad and it was a game changer for that roll you're talking about. They just flex with the weird angles instead of fighting them.

nathanking17d ago

Man that number is brutal, I feel your pain. For old houses I've had the best luck with the gel-pro style pads that strap on, they mold to the joists better than hard caps. The cheap foam ones just flatten out after a week. Also, try to find a pattern for moving so you're not always dropping straight down onto your knees.

the_diana15h ago

So @fionalopez mentioned that roll technique, how do you even start training your body to do that without thinking about it?