The Baboon Congress

The Dust Suckers

62 Comments

My apologies, Renee and Baboons.  I was away from e-mail and the blog all day yesterday, and did not realize there was no comment box in spite of several polite attempts made by diligent readers to call my attention to that fact.  

I blame the dust.  In my brain. 

Comments are now open on this post, which will remain up through the weekend. 

Today’s post comes from Renee in North Dakota.

Husband has terrible airborne allergies, particularly to dust and pollen and cat dander. I had hoped that when we installed new siding and windows in the house last year he would find some relief, at least inside the house, but it didn’t happen. We have HEPA filters running all the time and have dust mite proof mattress and pillow covers, and new carpets, but he still downs Sudafed and Allegra like candy and is always sneezing and clearing his throat.

I noticed that even when our new windows were shut tight, there was always a thick layer of dust on furniture and other surfaces. I know that it is dustier out here than in other places because of the winds we have, but, honestly, a person shouldn’t  have to dust twice a week when the windows haven’t even been opened.

It occurred to me that we must be recirculating dust whenever we ran the furnace or the central air conditioning. I replace the furnace filter at the approved intervals, but that didn’t help, either. We decided to call in the dust suckers, or, more professionally, Peterson’s Furnace and Air Duct Cleaners. They arrived today and spent 7 hours removing more dirt and objects from our furnace and furnace ducts than I thought possible. They have a 600 lb vacuum that gets connected to the furnace and cleans out everything. The hose is more than a foot in diameter.  They also go from the vents back to the furnace to make sure nothing is in the ducts, and then sterilize the whole duct system. Some of the more interesting things they removed included:

    • Pieces of lumber, presumably left by the construction workers who built the house in 1978
    • Chunks of drywall-ditto
    • Cassette tapes
    • Cat toys
    • Spoons (not soup spoons but spoons for feeding babies)
    • gargantuan dust bunnies

Mr. Peterson is a local, and his able assistant is from New Jersey and has the most delightful accent. They tell us that this procedure should be done about every 10 years. It evidently hasn’t ever been done here in the 37 years since the house was built.  It remains to be seen if husband’s allergies will remit somewhat, but getting rid of the dust certainly can’t hurt. I need to ask my children which of them stuffed cassette number 4 of Harry Potter and The Goblet of FIre down the heat vent, and why. Alas, though, now I know that none of my missing soup spoons are in the duct work.

What long-missing item might be hiding in your air ducts? 

 

62 thoughts on “The Dust Suckers”

  1. Morning all – Dale has turned on comments this morning but he’s not posting anything new as the world events the last 24 hours are a little too raw.

    What do you do when the news stinks?

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    1. ya know there is something about the fact that the world stops and ponders life after an atrocity that makes me sick. the shooters are doing it for attention and we give them exactly hwat they want.
      how about if we put up a picture of their mother and talk about what a crappy job she did of raising her child.
      to discuss the reasons they decided to terrorize is a payoff as much as a question.

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      1. Considering how differently my two sisters and I have turned out and the wildly varying things we believe, I don’t think we can lay this at the parents’ feet. Too many other factors!

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  2. got a note form dale that we are getting a shot at the dust bowl with a real live leave a comment option. i guess mr peterson dust sucking service gets an extended run.. thanks to dale for keeping us going and to renee and the rest of you for the guest blogs whil life is hectic for dale and i am afraid for me too. i should write a couple. heck i should write one but i respond when i can and enjoy all the snappy patter between baboons
    my dust comments are about done but i wil be creating a little as we go forward today moving boxes and closets and running to the warehouse to drop off goodies.
    i did remember a buddy who worked for a duct cleaning company for a week before he quit because of the smoke and mirrors presentation and all the hocus pocus they performed to make the buyer feel like they were getting something for their money.
    i know mr peterson is a man of good integrity but i was really hoping he would come up with those soup spoons. where could they be?
    renee what is the maker and the pattern again? i think we should fill out that silver service and be done with it. out at my warehouse i will on occasion have a lunch that requires eating utensils and discover i have none so i go open up a silver service i have in the back room and use a fancy fork or spoon for a bowl of salad or a plate of something. i hate it when i have to go find where out the fork after im done so the box remains full in each little slot in the tray.
    off to the moving man identity fo rt he day
    see ya later
    thanks dale for keeping s rolling

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  3. A few nights ago I was at my daughter’s house, chatting with her while she washed dishes. Liam, my grandson, found a small black Mag Lite flashlight in a drawer and showed it to me. I said, “Good light, Liam. I used to have one just like that.”

    My daughter broke into laughter. “Ooooh, I think there’s a good chance that is your flashlight!”

    For several years when she was a kid, our daughter was inclined to borrow things I thought were mine. Some eventually came back. Some did not. I had to grin at the memory of a time when stuff would disappear and I’d automatically look in my daughter’s room for it. That’s probably just part of the complex experience of being a parent, just like the experience of owning a dog sometimes means when you are barefoot going to the bathroom in the middle of the night you step in something squishy. In both cases you are well advised to be good-natured about it.

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    1. i had to laugh when up at my folks place i would run into my tools in my dads toolbox. my good hammer. me new drill. i remembered all the flack i took for pilfering his tools and had no response other than a big smile to see my good hammer iin there. he didnt even know it was a good one.
      its ok to have stuff like that happen as long as your kid doesnt end up blowing up paris ( see above)

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  4. We have a large shallow drawer in a rolling cart in the kitchen. It is the home of all manner of oddities: keys to who knows what, a few pens and magic markers, a screwdriver, some thingamajigs, and, if I’m lucky, a measuring tape. We must own at least 15 measuring tapes, and I like to have one handy in that drawer. Unfortunately, husband’s sense of order dictates that all measuring tapes belong in another drawer in his “shop” in the basement. I have asked him repeatedly to please leave one tape in the kitchen drawer, but inevitably when I need one, I have to descend into the dungeon that’s our basement to find one. I’ll admit I’m not very good-natured about that; you’d think he’d have learned that by now.

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    1. my main challange in organizing is trying to figure out where it is supposed to go. i put it where i think it is supposed to go and lo and behold when i go to grab it i find it has moved to where it is supposed to be. i am learning slowly but surely. i tell my kids you ned to put on your mom brain or your grandma brain to figure out where it is supposed to be. it never occurs to me that i need to instruct them to put on thier dad brain. i assume most people use the correct brain unless called on to do otherwise

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        1. you dont get it. youre putting it in the wrong place. maybe if you went out and bought one and painrted it orange and told hans this one is yours and it goes here he would agree. otherwise they are heading for his basement location where they ought to be

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        2. Ha! I owned several of those measuring tapes before I ever met the man. What is it about yours and Hans’ psyche that have you believing that you get to make all the rules? I would never presume to rearrange his “shop” or his office. All I’m asking is the same consideration be shown to me, and without me HAVING TO SHOUT ABOUT IT. Get it? I don’t know if this is a male thing, but I can tell you this, it’s getting old.

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      3. please note i said i put it where it is supposed to go. when i go to to grab it i find it is in someone else’s idea of the right place. its a reality thats all. sorry if i hit a hot button. i was kidding. shout if it helps

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  5. I recently had a service and cleanout my vents, ducts, etc. because I was noticing mold around the vents. Apparently this was caused by the setting on my a/c unit. Don’t ask me to explain. They set the a/c and suggested I not ever touch it again. Anyway, I don’t know if I can tell any difference in the air, but I feel better about the ‘cleanliness’ of my air!

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    1. I agree, BR. I don’t know why, but it bothers me to no end that each and every massacre is followed up with practically every figurehead saying “Our prayers are with you”. It seems so benign to me.

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  8. Well, for starters we don’t have ducts, we have radiator heat. Which means anything lost is either tucked somewhere where we won’t find it until we move into assisted living decades from now or it might be in the walls…Right now what might be back there is my good hammer (which I got in college and survived several moves until it arrived here, where – ahem – Husband used it and didn’t put it back…that one may even be in the back yard – he used a few of my tools as devices for pulling volunteers and weeds…good thing he does the laundry, that is almost a divorce-able offense). On a day like today, I think my optimism for the world is cleverly hidden and may need coaxing to come back out into the open, like a cat who has found a good hiding spot in the suspended ceiling.

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    1. I know what I’d find: a dozen dead and rotted chipmunks. My cat brings in at least that many each summer and I chase them around endlessly. When I can’t find them, there’s only one escape hatch, and that’s an uncovered heat vent.

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      2. My old duplex probably has more than a few desiccated mice in the walls. Possibly a squirrel. And yes, there was a stink at one point. Eeew. I had a cat who would kill and eat whatever was foolish enough to venture out from the walls, but it was gross. Old house, hard to keep the field mice from getting in – and had a roommate for awhile who was awful about leaving food around. Thank heavens for that cat. Once I got rid of the roommate and had the cat for a season or two, the mice disappeared.

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  9. I’m now the proud owner of a 2008 PT Cruiser Touring wagon. Picked it up and transferred the title to it this morning. It’s been years since I’ve had a car with a working radio! Now I have to clean out and find a new home for the old SAAB.

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        1. I still miss my old SAAB… from 1979… or some such year… tan… key between the seats… had to put it in reverse to start it, hood opened forwards, wipers did a weird ‘over wipe’ (for lack of a better term).
          I bought it used for $350. What a fun car. while we were on our honeymoon my nephew blew out the exhaust system and that was the beginning of the end.

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        2. Yep, I had one of those too. Mine was SAAB 900 hatchback. Started out as red, but by the time I was done with it, it was orange. Sold it to a neighbor for $900.00, and he drove it for years. At the time I was working for the law firm. Some of the firm’s mandatory-attendance parties were held at some hifalutin country club in one of the western suburbs, a place with a guard house. I was stopped every time I visited, and they had to call to verify that I was in fact an expected guess. Got to be both a joke and an embarrassment.

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        4. I don’t like the process of getting accustomed to a new car at all. Too damned many buttons, and adjustments of this, that and the other thing. Hans has just spent most of the weekend cleaning and waxing the it; I think he’s more excited about the new car than I am. In return I’m treating him to dinner at one of his favorite restaurants, The St. Clair Broiler.

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        5. Guess it won’t be the St. Clair Broiler after all. It has changed owners since we were there last – several years ago. Checked the Google reviews, and most of the recent ones give it only one star and horrible reviews. We’re headed to Everest on Grand instead.

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  10. Evening–
    At a former theater, anything missing was usually found under the counter up in the concessions area.
    We know the place was haunted and I guess that’s where they left stuff…

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  11. One of the virtues of my Saint Paul bungalow is that it kept me cozy in winter with radiators. Now I live as most Americans do, with noisy, dusty ducts that carry hot or cold blown air. I miss my silent friends, the radiators.

    A recent This Old House episode explored how European (or at least German) homes are controlled for heat. There are several advanced systems that are more cost-efficient, comfortable and kind to the planet than our hot-and-cold blown air system.

    Why do Americans not use them? Two reasons. Americans are fonder of chilled air than Europeans are, and nobody has invented air conditioning that doesn’t depend on air ducts. Since we need air ducts for a/c, we use it also for heat. And while there are cunning technologies that are more energy-efficient than what we use in this country, they cost more initially. Europeans don’t sell their homes and move as often as we do, so they can invest in better technologies, knowing they will be in the home long enough to benefit from the efficiencies.

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    1. I’ve lived a number of places that had forced air heat. Not one of them had central air conditioning, though. I’m not sure why radiator heat fell out of favor, but it happened before the rush to central air conditioning.

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  12. OT: Since nobody is talking, I hope nobody minds if I go off topic. I’m trying to get a sense for my new city. Portland likes to think of itself as “weird,” as in the oft-repeated line, “Keep Portland weird.” I think that is stolen from Austin, but at least we stole a line about being a kinky, liberal city.

    Crime is more pesky here than in the Twin Cities, especially the crime of bicycle theft. This town adores bicycles. We just can’t keep them from being stolen. The news Friday that made everyone here grin is the arrest of a tall African-American dubbed “the kingpin of bicycle thefts.” Cops put out an expensive bicycle chained to a post in an area where bikes often disappear. It was stolen in less than half an hour. Since the cops put a GPS sensor inside the frame, they could follow the thief. When the cops and TV cameras arrived, the bike theft kingpin was already dismantling the bait bike apart to sell the parts. He had style, this thief. Most street thieves are thick-witted thugs. Enjoying his moment on-camera, the kingpin said, “If you are dumb enough to put a $2500 bike on the back of a car, I’m just dumb enough to steal it.”

    Portland is proud of a business that recently opened downtown: Purrington’s. Purrington’s exemplifies what Portland wants to believe of itself. It is a yoga parlor, a hole in the wall filled with yoga mats where people can stretch and strike poses. The room is absolutely filled with cats, so if you are doing the “Bird of Paradise” pose you might have two or three cats gliding past your ankle. And then this is the special Portland touch: all the cats are rescue cats, many from California kill shelters, and they’re all for sale.

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    2. It is always nice to find a new topic we have never discussed before. I don’t think the topic of heating ducts has come up even once in the history of Trail Baboon. I look forward to whatever comes next, Renee.

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