Getting my Ducts in a Row

Holy Jumpin' Jiminy Gee-hoe-saphat!
Maglockland Puick!
Sheep Shit and Bulls Balls

People, clean your ducts and change your furnace filters. No wonder I was sick. And so were my visitors. Talk about, "Welcome to my nightmare." 

See this?

This is a furnace vent clogged with dust...
sure... let's call it dust.

  This is what it looks like now that Brad from Lethbridge Duct Cleaning took care of that.

He went through all the ducts and cold air returns. He explained to me that most of what came out of the works went into the large vacuum attached to the furnace.

Sheepshit

But he showed me this small ball of dust etc that landed on the plates. Don't make me explain that. Just accept that this is the tip of the iceberg removed from my duct work today. Shown here for illustration of the kinds of... of... stuff(?) hiding in the duct work.
Brad did mention that the previous owners (you mean someone in the past 100 years?) must have had a cat because he could have reconstructed one with the contents of the big vacuum.


Then he opened up the furnace to inspect, clean and repair it if necessary. I spent $17 on a thermocouple and $20 on filter cloth (I'll get to that). Here is what my motor looked like when Brad first removed the door.

 Those grey lumps at the front are dust clumps from the pipes that came out during cleaning. He shined that motor up and made sure the antique furnace won't quit on me due to lack of maintenance.
Antique you say?

In case you don't know this, all forced air furnaces have filters you're supposed to change regularly especially in winter when they are running. Modern (as in post war) (okay, I'm exaggerating) furnaces have these easy-peasy cardboard and fiberglass filters that you pull out with one hand and slide in a new one.

Not this puppy.

I didn't take a photo, but this furnace has a basket filter. Let me explain. There is a piece of wire fencing material (or something like) with made to order clasping bars that come apart.
You take the clasping bars apart, cut a piece of fiberglass cloth to size and put the whole thing back together.
The cloth we removed from that basket was twice the thickness it started out as and black. You could see where it had been white.
I changed the cloth myself and was mighty proud 'til Brad tsk, tsked me and told me I failed miserably. Such a sweetie that Brad. But, he had a point; I put the cloth on the wrong side of the fence so to speak. I'm very glad he stuck around long enough to make sure I got that right.

I can't tell you how great it feels to know that all that crap is out of my house. I suspect my indoor air quality just went up a billion fold. AND I opened a kitchen cupboard this afternoon when I got home from work and felt a warm breeze on my hand! This had not happened before and I open that cupboard 10 times a day. You would think that at some point in the past month, I would have felt that warm breeze coming from the floor vent.

not quite done, but looking good

The icing on the cake to this day is...
I also got a new front door!

Then I went into work and got a pumpkin from the garden. This was a banner day AND I got to sleep in. Sigh, it's been a great day and I give thanks to all the people who made that happen.
Thank you Brad.
Thank you Stephen & Sharol
Thank you Jamie

Thank you, Thank you,
Thank you.
My life is blessed.