What’s In Your Home’s Air Ducts?

You probably have given very little thought to your home’s air ducts. They’re just there, doing their job blowing warm or cool air throughout your home. No problem, right? Well, considering the average home in America is 35 years old, chances are there are years of build-up in your home’s air ducts. Just what could be inside of your home’s air ducts? Read on to discover some the weirdest things professional air duct cleaners have found on the job.

A few years ago, during a cleaning job, we found a box behind a register that contained $400 of Confederate money. We gave it to the homeowner and she gave it to her children, who cashed it out. That $400 of Confederate money ended up being worth $100,000!

We got a call from a customer saying they had a mysterious odor in the home. Our technicians went into the home and they definitely smelled something very strong, but couldn’t find anything obvious at the start. Finally, they took off the vent covers and found a dead skunk!

We do a lot of post-construction after homes are built, especially townhouses, and one thing we find a lot of is pee bottles used by workers during construction. It’s gross, but they’re everywhere, on every job. During a cleaning, one of those bottles got sucked up into our negative air machine, went through the blower blade and sprayed everywhere outside. It was really disgusting.

We were cleaning ductwork and in the basement of the establishment, there was a kitchen with a grill. Right above that was the bulkhead with an air duct blowing right over the grill, which we were cleaning. We took off the supply duct, shined a light in there and, low and behold, there was a giant, dead rat. In the course of cleaning, the gentleman befriended us and offered to make us lunch on the grill. We politely declined the offer.

We had posted a video of a cleaning job to our social media account and someone commented on it, “Wow, did you see the dollar bill get sucked in there?” The trunk line was really full of all kinds of junk, so I thought “Well, I’m not surprised that there was a dollar bill in that mess.” Later on, someone commented, “That wasn’t a dollar bill, that was a $100 bill!” I went into the truck and sifted through all the garbage to try to find it, but no luck.

We did a cleaning on an old rail car and found a pre-Civil War whiskey bottle stashed away in the ducts of the rail car. The bottle is now sitting a museum somewhere.