If you don't have a carbon monoxide CO detector in your house... please get one. We just got back from a visit with one of my wife's friends, who she doesn't hear from often. She lost her husband a couple years ago and lives alone. 2 small dogs. For the past week she'd been emailing bits and pieces to my wife about how she'd been feeling. I just heard about them this morning. She'd passed out a couple times and got banged up from the falls. And... was disoriented and couldn't quite figure out how to do simple stuff. Light headed all the time. It turned out she had been having these symptoms for a month and had no idea what was causing it. Was afraid she had all kinds of different health problems. Just by coincidence (or maybe an angel told her), she thought the furnace wasn't keeping the temperature setting correctly, so she called her furnace guy this last Friday. Good thing she did. That call may have saved her life and the dogs who had been hacking for the last week or so. They opened the windows and aired the place out. He checked the entire furnace over and replaced the 6" pipe from the furnace to the chimney (though it may not have needed it). He then got her to immediately get a chimney cleaning company there the same day to inspect the chimney. That's where the problem was. Part of her old liner had crumbled and had blocked the flue. They cleared it all out. A stainless liner will be installed soon. We picked up a CO detector on the way over and got it going for her. She's feeling much better today and will check with her doc tomorrow. Lucky gal. She had absolutely no idea there was a problem with the furnace chimney. Remember, you can't smell CO gas in the air. A detector can.
Glad she is ok! Awesome of you guys to hook her up with a CO detector, for this immediate waiting period til the liner gets installed, and for future monitoring
No... the house had been aired out really good for a couple days off and on, by the time we got there. She seemed to be just fine. My honey made her promise to talk with her doc anyway, just to be sure she's OK.
Yeesh. Have seen a number of deaths due to improperly installed appliances and some due to just plain stupidity. Especially scary are failures like that, that go undetected. Glad your wife's friend is OK.
For sure, and get a few of them. check them often and remember they get out dated and need to be replaced.
Good job, Stinny. I don't really care for chimney liners. To me they seem like a temporary fix to a permanent problem.
A man I worked with often went to see his son that was in a "home" He was on a business trip in 1970's, hotel furnace malfunctioned while he slept. He almost a vegetable still, all these years later. Tragic. We have 3 CO detectors, both plugs into wall, and has 9V batt backup.
Yup... fumes from the furnace, over time, just eats the liner. The fumes do not effect the stainless I guess.
What affects a clay liner is the acid in the process of incomplete combustion. This will collect on the clay liner and eventually decay it. Anyone who vents a water heater into a clay lined chimney stands a high risk chance of this happening since during the off months, the liner never gets hot enough to properly vent the products of combustion out of the house. They just kind of puddle in the chimney and end up breaking it down.
Required by law up here, we have two, one on each end of the house....................Good ending to what could have been very tragic.
My daughter has her bedroom downstairs where we have a natural gas furnace (seldom used), natural gas hot water tank (new) and the wood stove so we have 2 co detectors in the hallway outside her bedroom. This thread is a good reminder to all to be diligent about protecting their loved ones.
