Due to a number of groggy days at home experienced by those of us residing at #4, and per the suggestion of my mother, we recently purchased a carbon monoxide detector. Apparently every home should have one, or like 17 according to the box. After popping in a fresh set of batteries and a quick read over the directions, we set the thing on an end table in the bedroom, waiting for it to alert us of what we suspected might be the source of our lethargy and haziness. Not a peep it made. Perhaps we're just lazy and need to get out more. Done.
Weeks pass, still not a shrill note uttered by the CO detector. (CO is carbon monoxide in science geek language. 1 carbon, 1 oxygen...you get it. I can show you the structure of the molecule if that'll help...) Then, a few evenings ago, an unfamiliar sound pierced our eardrums. It must be the smoke detector, we're cooking dinner...No, it doesn't sound like that... You guessed it. The little white cylinder in the bedroom was identified as the source of the shrill noise. Great. What do we do now? Call the fire department? That costs half a fortune... Open the windows? Yes! So we did and it stopped.
After searching for the remains of mice under the stove earlier that day, I decided that I might as well clean the oven while I was in the area. I had all kinds of windows open throughout the house all day, but when Keith got home, it was starting to cool off and he closed the windows. A few hours later, the fumes, in high enough concentration to set of the alarm, reached the bedroom. Simple enough. Plausible. Problem solved.
Two days later, while I'm at work, the alarm goes off again. No oven being cleaned this time...hmmm.... K figures it has something to do with the wind and the furnace. I dunno. Not a good thing since it's windy here all the time! As a solution, we keep the door to the laundry room and utility room closed and the window in there open. Seems to have solved the problem for now.
I wonder what would have happened if we hadn't bought the detector?
2 comments:
Thank you for that info. i am going to go buy one and see if it has anything to do with my heaches. not sure what you do when it goes off, soungs like you open windows and doors and lock the dog out. K has the ability to let some powerful gas go once in awhile maybe that is the source. as a baby he cleaned out a whole room of nebraska football players once. he was 6 months old. we opened all the doors and windows and had to wait to go back in and finish our hamburgers can you picture that 14 people standing out side looking in the windows and a 15 poound baby laying on the couch smiling.........
....smiling....farting....
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