Today started off fairly normal. Lori cleaned the house for our party on Sunday and did a little last minute shopping for some gifts. We made our way over to Penny (Lori's aunt, more like a sister)and Jim's house down in Arlington Heights around 3pm. It was great to see everyone. All were healthy and the kids have all reached an age where they can get along for longer periods of time and not need constant adult supervision. Lori's cousin Sandy and her husband came and brought their new baby boy. He is 6 days old. He was obviously the center of attention with all the women. 7pm rolled around and we made our way back home. We were welcomed in by our CO detector going off. My first thought was to replace the batteries in it but I remembered that I just changed them in the fall. Instead we called the FD. They came out and took a reading of 31ppm in the house. Not good. We evacuated the kids and dog and called an HVAC contractor to come out and take a look at the furnace. $200 (cheaper than I thought) later we were ok to occupy again. Turns out the furnace was fine. It was the hot water heater. I flush it regularly but evidently it is common for the exhaust vent to begin to clog and that was what was causing the elevated CO levels. Somewhat of a surreal event. I remembered that the reason we bought them was 2 years ago this Christmas there was a news story of a family with 5 children who all succumbed to CO poisoning. Lori and I were so emotionally moved by the devastation that family was enduring that next day I went out and bought our two detectors. Someone was watching out for us. We would have gone to bed and possibly not woken up. Instead we are safe, all for $40.I am spending some time looking at ordinances this week to see if there are any in place as there are for smoke detectors.
By the way the Kidde Nighthawk is ranked #1 for residential use by Consumer Reports. They also say to replace your CO detectors every 5 years.
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