The Fort was hit by a major set-back the other day. I woke up to my carbon monoxide alarm going off at around 11 pm. I'll be honest, it actually had gone off a couple times before but I just kept thinking it was all the sawdust or something so I would re-set it and carry on. The other night though, I knew it had to be the gas stove that's been the only heat source I have for the house.
Up until a few weeks ago, I didn't even have a detector in the house. A friend told me I should probably get one since the furnace was so old and not really vented all that properly. Had I not bought the detector, who knows what could have happened? One would think that you would feel the effects of CO poisoning by either experiencing headaches or dizziness but there have been plenty of people who go to bed at night and just don't wake up. In fact, 430 people die in the U.S. every year from CO poisoning according to the CDC and around 50,000 go to the ER due to the poisoning.
Alright, so what you're supposed to do when the detector goes off is to leave the house and seek fresh air but at 11 pm, I was pretty tired. I chose to bring the detector into my bedroom and roll the dice. I didn't have anywhere else to go. I called Northwestern Energies the next morning. When the guy came out, his tester immediately started going off. When he cranked up the stove, the gauge on his detector spiked up to 90 ppm within seconds. They suggest not spending more than 8 hours in a place that's 100 ppm.
So here's the deal. Northwestern had to shut off my gas so I had to call an HVAC contractor up to see if this piece of junk could be fixed and the venting system could be brought up to code. The word I got was that it would cost a significant amount of money just to get this furnace usable so...looks like I'm going to have a brand new forced air system installed.
In the meantime...
I hope we don't get slammed with a cold snap anytime soon.
Keep 'em where they live...
No comments:
Post a Comment