Carbon Monoxide Dilemma

Yesterday afternoon Bryce called me from home to tell me that our carbon monoxide detector was going off. Now, the kids and I had been gone all morning so I knew nothing had been on at the house to cause any false alarm. We decided to call the fire department who quickly came out to examine the house. The conclusion? We did indeed have an over-abundance of c.m. in our house. Hmmm, fun times.

So we aired out our house (well, let all the cold air in to the tune of 57 degrees in the house after the 'airing.') and waited for the heating company to get to us. Well, after waiting about 6 hours, they finally made their appearance around 8:30pm. I wasn't too annoyed, these are long days for them, apparently people's heaters always go out when they need them most...on these cold, cold days.

After a promise to be back today with their manager (because they were unsure of an exact diagnosis), they left. We stayed the night at Linda's house and woke up this morning to a good 3-4 inches of snow on the ground. And it snowed all day long....with more promised tonight and another drop in temperature tomorrow. So not the time you want to be without a functional furnace. I took Kelsi home around 10:30am to try and heat the house with our little gas fireplace (which honestly didn't work too well. I don't think we ever got above 60 degress after 5 or so hours) and patiently wait for the heater guys.

We waited....and waited.....and waited. Finally around 3:30pm or so they got here. After spending around 2 hours at our house checking EVERYTHING that has anything to do with natural gas we got our diagnosis. Apparently all they can find is that it must have been a 'build up' of c.m. in our house from a mixture or our range, our furnace, and just general living without airing, due to the cold weather.

For a total worry wart, this was not quite a comfortable diagnosis. When your family's lives are possibly at stake you really want someone to be able to tell you , 'yes, this is what was causing it, yes, we have fixed it.' You know? Now, I feel we are just hanging our hopes and our lives on a $45 carbon monoxide detector.