Air ducts are the part of most people’s house they never see and never think about. For homeowners, it’s just a system that heats and cools their house. For heating, ventilation, and air conditioning technicians like us, ducts are a gateway into a strange and sometimes surprising world of what people have stashed out of sight in their homes over the years. As a leading homegrown provider of furnace and air conditioner services in Calgary, at AJ Furnace, we’ve pulled the strangest of stuff.

A Trunk of Treasures

It was just another day on a service call: a homeowner paid us to clear his old house’s duct system. We put the vacuum hose into the main trunk line, snaked it down, and at one point the hose abruptly stopped dead. It wasn’t a twist in the duct; it was something solid. After a few tugs, we freed it and pulled out an old leather briefcase.

Among the contents was a cornucopia of treasure: stamped letters from the nineteen fifties, black-and-white photos, a rusty pocket watch, and a stack of yellowing papers with cursive script. It was certainly the twenty-first-century garbage diver’s gold. The homeowner had no idea it was there! We brought it all back to him. At least one mystery is solved.

Skeleton Surprise

You know how it may feel when something jumps out at you from the shadows. We were cutting out stuff from the ductwork to clean it, and we had an old plastic skeleton burst out of the ductwork from the inside. A human sceleton from the teenage son’s biology class was missing in action for years! Eventually, it ended up inside the big round duct inside his bedroom. We have seen a lot of stuff erupt out of ductwork over the years, but a femur to the face? That was no doubt a truly unforgettable experience when it comes to furnace and air conditioner services in Calgary.

Creature Capers

Through the years, there have been dead birds and rodent carcasses strewn throughout Calgary’s ductwork, but those are fairly common and no less disturbing to pull out. We once jostled free a ball-sized clump of wasps tucked into an old boot at the back of a duct trunk, but at least they were all dead! All in all, though, the most disgusting thing we’ve ever had to wrestle out of a ventilating shaft was a garter snake. This particular live reptile must have slipped in from outside; it was thrashing and coiling itself around the vacuum hose like it wanted to sever our wrists. You can be sure we did not want to repeat that experience.

Cash Cache

Okay, this is one of those duct tales that turns out well. We were cleaning at a new home. We looked up into the ductwork near the main trunk and saw an item wedged up in there. We hooked up our vacuum and pulled it out. It was an old mint tin loaded with cash! We tracked down the homeowners. They were so happy to get their cash back, especially since it was from the birthday fund of their little girl. She also learned that day a valuable lesson about what not to do with your piggy bank money. Call us now to learn about our furnace and air conditioner services in Calgary!