Uncommon Finds While Cleaning Air Ducts in Cache Valley

When cleaning air ducts and vents, you expect to find certain things. Dust is always there. Dryer vents frequently have lint in them. Coins and pet dander are fairly regular. Even dead mice and children’s toys are relatively common to find while cleaning air ducts. That said, every now and then we find something unusual. Here are some of the more interesting ones.

1. Beer Bottles

So, people who get drunk sometimes make poor decisions. Alcohol impairs your judgement, after all. How drunk do you have to be before you say, “Hey, I think I should throw my beer bottle in the air vent”? I wouldn’t know, since I don’t drink myself, but apparently you can get that drunk. Perhaps a person just dropped a beer bottle on the ground and it rolled into an open vent at some point. Whatever the reason, we’ve found beer bottles in air ducts before.

2. Construction Debris

This one makes some sense. You can see how construction debris might get into air vents. When construction workers remodel a home, they’re tearing down walls and sometimes they move vents around. It’s possible for debris to get in. This one is fairly rare, since most construction companies will take efforts to cover vents while they work and attempt to clean them out afterward. That said, every now and then, we’ve found the remnants of construction work in air ducts while cleaning. Sometimes, this has included highly toxic substances, like fiberglass insulation. It might be a good idea to ask your construction company about the steps they take to make sure they clean debris out of vents before you hire them. If you’ve had reconstruction done in the past, it might also be wise to have us check out your air ducts to make sure they’re clean.

3. Big Toys

Little toys like GI Joes or Star Wars figures – especially their tiny accessories – are a super common find in air ducts. Even with vents, its possible for these items to slip through. There’s a limit to what you expect, though. We’ve found toys almost too big to fit through the vent openings, even without guards on them. For example, we once pulled an RC car out of an air duct. We have no idea how it got there. The kids also claim to not know. We’re totally stumped on it, but there it was.

Go figure.

4. Bird Nests

Most homes will have filters on their ducts, so we don’t usually see this one. When we do, it’s usually in apartments that lack adequate ventilation filters. If there’s a way birds can squeeze in, an air duct will seem like a great place to build a nest in the spring. It’s warm, it’s sheltered, and it’s beyond the easy reach of cats. If we do find a bird nest, it’s a good sign your ventilation filters are either damaged, or that you haven’t had any installed. This means your air ducts aren’t properly filtered for the bad air we get during the winters in Cache Valley.

Or, for that matter, against the bad air we’re getting right now from all the smoke.

5. Human Feces

Yup. Poop. I’m not even going to think about why we occasionally find this one. That it’s happened more than once is already unpleasant enough. Given that this requires some special cleaning, we charge an extra for cleaning this up if we find it. It might also be a good idea to have it cleaned with a disinfectant fogging system, which we can recommend to you if we need to.

How Clean Are Your Air Ducts?

We can ask the question, but the truth is you won’t know for certain until we get in there and clean them up. If your air ducts and vents have proper filters and covers, they shouldn’t get very dirty very quickly. Cleaning them isn’t something you’ll need to do very often, but once every couple of years is definitely a good idea. If it’s been a while since you’ve had your air ducts cleaned – or you’ve never had it done because you’ve never thought about it – now’s probably a good time. There are plenty of benefits to getting them cleaned up that you’ll notice once it’s done. Get in touch with us today and schedule an appointment to make sure you can breathe easy this fall