911

we got back home from 2 weeks up in Canada for Christmas and the house was reading 39 degrees F, yup, that's almost frozen. Our best guess is that the cleaning lady shut it off by mistake since Sondra let her in on Wednesday and she said the house was warm both before and after setting the house alarm.

Man, we could see our breath it was so cold. Water worked though and no frozen pipes!

Once we got in Eileen fired up the gas fireplace to high. After a few hours we got up another 20 degrees but still needed jackets in the house. The CO monitor started going off as well about every 15 minutes but I dismissed it thinking it was the shock to the house. We shut off the fireplace because we figured that must be the problem.

We went out for dinner to the Green Door so that the house could warm up. We were out about an hour and when we returned things were around 60 degrees and once again the alarm kept going off. I took it down and checked the cell (battery and chemicals combined) which I installed in Sept 07 and the marking showed - do not install after march 09 - so i think it might still be fine.

After that Eilen decided to play it safe and call 311 about the alarm going off and of course, they transfered the call directly to 911. The fire truck was here a few minutes later with sirens on and a large ladder. 3 firemen came off the truck and one with a CO meter (Ed) and he went everywhere in the house and didn't read any CO readings so they gave the house a clean bill of health.

They also said they would call the gas company to come and take more readings.

An hour later the gas company showed up. Once I explained the situation about the fireplace being on high he knew right away that was the problem and was ready to leave. They pulled out a meter of course and hit the stove, furnace and fireplace and of course the fireplace had a reading since it is not vented outside.

He said that those fireplaces are 20% heat and 80% ambiance and aren't meant for heat but just a little low fire to cap the chill only as they are not vented outside.

Before they left Eileen asked to have them check my work on installing the stove top underneath since I knew that there was a small leak it was no surprise when they said they were getting a reading. He said he'd close the valve and block it then write me a notice. When I asked for someone to fix it he said they could and it would be $60. Twenty minutes later it was done with a new pipe. Case closed.

The gas guy also mentioned that once the CO meters go off they tend to continue to alarm until you leave them outside for a while to clear. I put it in a box in the garage because it kept going off and was loud. I guess I'll plug it in later today.

Now, back to finishing the windows 7 x86 enterprise install on eileen's laptop (meduse) and off to skating with Charlie and the neighbour.