That's what we came home to yesterday. We pulled into the garage after church and I could hear the smoke detectors going off inside the house. At first I thought that something might have gone terrible wrong with my crock-pot dinner but quickly realized that that was not the problem. It was carbon monoxide. I quickly packed the kids into the car and headed back to the church to get Bryan.
You see, this isn't the first time that our lovely house has fill up with deadly levels of CO, it happened in Feb of 08. It was a very windy day and the air in our home couldn't vent properly so it started filling up with CO. We're guessing that that's what happened this time too. I was hoping Bryan could come home and fix it without having to call for any help. We opened windows and turned off the furnace but still didn't feel good about having the kids in the house without knowing for sure if it was safe or not. So we ended up calling the fire department to come test the air.
They closed the windows and had us wait in the car while they walked through the house with oxygen tanks and air monitors. They found that the levels in the basement were fine, living room area was slightly elevated, but that the bedrooms upstairs had the most CO. They opened up all the windows again, turned on fans and the bathroom vents, and brought in a large fan to the kitchen. After 15 minutes or so the levels were down and we were safe to go back in.
We left the furnace off and the windows open for a while to play it safe. Shortly after we got back inside, Bryan and the older girls left for the temple dedication. Tyler, Kate and I were left in the freezing house. We laid on the couch with blankets and watched a movie. I was able to get Kate to take a little nap in my arms since she couldn't go in her room. I closed all the windows around 5:30 when the temp in our house got to 62 on the main level (a lot colder upstairs where the windows were open). We didn't turn the heat back on until about 6:30. It was still really cold upstairs when we put kids to bed.
I guess it's time to figure out what needs to be done to fix the problem so that it does not happen a third time. Every time it's windy (which seems to be often out here), we worry about if our CO alarms are going to go off again. It's a good thing that we have them or the outcome could have been a lot worse. I am very grateful that we are all safe and healthy. Test your alarms, make sure that they work. If you don't have a Carbon Monoxide alarm, get one- you never know when you're going to need it!
4 comments:
I am glad you guys are okay. That is scary!
Wow, I can't believe that happened again!
I'm glad you have alarms, but I agree with you, having the alarms go off so often is not normal and something needs to be fixed!
I hope you figure it out soon.
That doesn't sound like a fun experience!
Hopefully you will be able to get it fixed so that it doesn't happen again!
WOW, not a fun experience. Once in TX our Carbon Monoxide alarm went off and we had partical power (weird orange glow on our lights) and a smell of electrical burns. We got everyone out, shut off the power to the whole house and called the firemen. We couldn't go back into the home until late the next day. It was just an electrical problem and we saved the house from a fire. We lost many things that were plugged in (fried them). There wasn't any real CO concern-- that was going off because of the power surge.
Glad you are OK!
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