we all could have died - no kidding

I and my family appear to have escaped death by some kind of amazing luck. During a routine chimney cleaning, we discovered that our furnace has become totally disconnected from the chimney and has apparently been spewing exhaust into the house walls for God knows how long. We have carbon monoxide detectors on every floor, including one right next to the furnace, and none has ever alarmed. The chimney guy opined that 90% of the time, they don't work anyway... it's going to be big, big bucks to get this fixed, but we obviously have no choice. At least heating season is over, and all we have to do is go without hot water for a while.

Neither my husband nor kids has had any of the symptoms I've now read about, with respect to acute CO poisoning (headaches, nausea, dizzyness), but I can't help but wonder if maybe some of my persistent apnea-like symptoms might also be attributable to chronic low-level CO exposure... right now, I am glad that we, and especially my children, my God, are alive and healthy (the kids actually just had their annual physical yesterday).

ABSOLUTELY fix any furnace venting problems you have.

Don't forget that the chimney guy is selling you chimney services, so he has a big financial incentive to make things sound as bad as possible. He also has a "professional" duty to warn you about the risks and not to minimize them. He is educated by whatever trade groups he belongs to in finding hazards and potential hazards. All of the above applies to an honest tradesman. He's not lying, may not even be trying to stretch the truth, but he has a strong bias in favor of finding problems.

Don't forget that a lot of tradesmen ARE outright dishonest, too.

A properly operating furnace doesn't spew out that much carbon monoxide. It used to be common to have unvented gas heaters inside the home. Having your furnace vented improperly DOES pose a danger, but it's not really that surprising that you could have a bad furnace vent for a long time and not have any significant CO buildup in the house.

I suspect he's -ahem- blowing smoke up your exhaust vent about CO detectors not working. Once again, he's "talking his own book" as they say on Wall Street. He probably sees a lot of cases where there's something wrong with the exhaust vents, yet no significant CO accumulated in the living spaces. Therefore, he thinks the CO detectors failed, and more people should pay him for maintenance. How many cases has he seen where someone had high levels of CO in the living area of house or actual CO poisoning and the CO detectors didn't go off?

As I said before, ABSOLUTELY, do fix any real problems you have.

Yeah, agree. We're getting another quote... but I also saw the furnace pipe hanging totally away from the chimney. Zero question that we have a problem that needs urgent attention.

wolewyck wrote:We have carbon monoxide detectors on every floor, including one right next to the furnace, and none has ever alarmed. The chimney guy opined that 90% of the time, they don't work anyway...

IIRC, they're supposed to be replaced every 5 years. But you can take them out to your car and see how they respond to the exhaust.

it's going to be big, big bucks to get this fixed, but we obviously have no choice.

Why is it going to be expensive to fix? Can't the the pipe just be reattached or replaced? If the same person who is going to fix this also discovered the problem, he may have created it as well. I'd get a second estimate just to be sure you're not being had.

The expense it turns out we have more than one problem... not only were the pipes not properly attached either to the chimney flue or to one another (thus falling) but further exploration reveals that the the chimney liner tiles are cracked--i.e., the chimney also needs to be lined. That's where the big cost driver is.

I gave a C0 detector to sister-in-law. It woke them in the middle of the night. Her husband reset it and it went off again. They went to mom-in-law's house at 2AM to finish the night. The wood burning furnace had broke a chimney pipe and they did at least have a warning of a deadly situation. So C0 detectors do work some of the time. My furnace/AC guy has a special detector he uses when he checks the furnaces. He claims it is as good as the ones the gas company uses.
Glad you and your family is safe.

I had a CO detector go off in the middle of the night. I got up, made sure I wasn't in immediate danger and started checking. It was winter, so the furnace wasn't running. I looked at the water heater and nothing was wrong. Nothing burning on the stove except pilot lights.

All the natural gas equipment was on the other end of the house. I had the window open in my bedroom and a fan in the window blowing air into the house from there. I checked that there wasn't something like a car running outside the window, and nothing else that could be producing CO. I had another CO detector in the house closer to all the natural gas burning equipment that said "0" CO.

I unplugged the noisy CO detector, took the battery out of it. Went and sat outside for a while, making sure that I was as clear headed as I usually would be after being blasted out of sleep. I decided that as long as I was in the bedroom on the other end of the house with the fan in the window, either I was going to be OK, or the whole neighborhood was in trouble. If the whole neighborhood was in trouble, the other CO detectors should go off soon. I brought the CO detector that still read "0" into my bedroom and went back to sleep. I checked the CO detector the next day, threw it in the trash and got a new one.

I currently have 3 CO detectors in the house, including one that's a CO and flammable gas detector, but I do know sometimes they do go off when there's nothing wrong. The scary part is that when it goes off, you need to be sure it's really a false alarm, and that you're not just disregarding it because you're brain addled from CO poisoning.

archangle wrote:The scary part is that when it goes off, you need to be sure it's really a false alarm, and that you're not just disregarding it because you're brain addled from CO poisoning.

That could be difficult to do. I had CO poisoning once, not from a furnace malfunction, but from changing light bulbs on the ceiling of an auto emissions testing site. I didn't feel like anything was wrong. My partner, who hadn't been up on the ceiling, wondered why I took a convoluted route to our next stop, but I insisted that was the way to go. Then I bent one of the latches on our tool bed backing into a parking meter. At that point, he figured out what was going on, and I let him drive.

The effects lasted for several days, but it was never obvious to me that I was poisoned. Though the CO made me stupid, I could only tell that I was stupid when I tried to do things and they didn't work. Hence if you breathe enough CO to get addled, I wouldn't count on realizing it. However, CO monitors are pretty sensitive, and assuming it worked properly and you got out right away, you probably wouldn't get enough CO to skew your thinking.

CO detectors have a life span of 5 years. If your detector is older than 5 years it needs to be replaced.

Jim