Long arm for picking up rubble

[Jason]

Something else I thought of - smash the bricks up by dropping an iron weight on a rope. Then suck up all the rubble with an industrial vacuum.

[Jason]

The more I read, the more I am being convinced that I need to get out my big drill, set to hammer, and smash it all out from below.

[Jason]

That would certainly work if I smashed the bricks up with a weight on rope.

Also an extra long cable hook like the kind they use to catch rabid dogs - kind of like a tube with a cable down the middle that is fixed at the far end, and can be pulled tight when it wraps around a brick.

[Jason]

...then I get to pull it halfway up, the claw opens, the brick drops, and I have to put another quid in the slot.

[Jason]

They would need to be about 18 months to be small enough to lower down on a rope. I could start training the neighbour's six-month old baby now, I guess...the chimney needs cleaning too.

[Jason]

I am going to be in real trouble with my partner after I take down half the living room wall to recover the child from behind, after the rope comes off.

[polygonum]

Shades of Hoffnung.

[Mike Clarke]

There was a time when it would have been a small child on a rope.

[chrisj.doran%proemail.co.uk]

Drain rods ending with a scoop something like a big bent spoon. Alternatively, a cone-shaped bedspring you can screw onto the brick.

Medical long-reach grippers for removing objects from children's throats are a sort of inverted Y whose tail you pull up the tube to close the V bit. Could you make something similar on the end of a hosepipe?

In any case, don't try to do the full lift with the gripper -- just use it to lift the brick into a basket on a rope. If the bricks are really loosely packed, you might just be able to push them sideways into the basket with a long rod. But doing anything at the end of a long rod is never easy.

Chris

[John Rumm]

It would be relatively easy to chop out a few bricks... those Armeg brick removing chisels work quite well for neatly removing bricks. A diamond of four bricks ought to enable decent access, and would be self supporting, so you could leave it open for future use (with cover if you want).