Until Sunday at 2:00 it was the perfect weekend.
Mr. Jazz and I played hooky on Friday and after a few errands took off to the cottage.
Friday night he made salmon and we watched Josée Di Stasio. She has a food/cooking show - for the next five weeks she's wandering through Provence, meeting people, cooking, etc... It's our current obsession. How is it that I don't like to cook but am obsessed with cookbooks and cooking shows?
Saturday, I didn't even get out of my PJs. And Mr. Jazz cooked again for supper, pork tenderloin with a lovely wine....
Sunday we came home.
I mentioned in an earlier post that our furnace was acting sorta wonky. And that I had to clean it. Well, after the cleaning, it still was smelling strange and throwing out soot, so Sunday we cleaned the pipes between the furnace and the chimney.
The guy who cleans the chimney doesn't do it.
The guy who cleans the furnace doesn't do it.
Who knew?
Of course with gas heating we shouldn't have to clean the chimney, but we figured, hell maybe something's blocked.
So Mr. Jazz and I bravely went where we had never gone before, took the pipes apart and cleaned them up with a metal brush. They were filthy - and so were we once we had finished. Then we figured well, while we're at it, let's clean as much of the furnace as we can. We did. Then started it up again.
And the smell started up. And the soot started up. And me? I wouldn've just thrown up my arms and gone out for dinner. Or curled up in a corner and cried. Mr Jazz? He called the gaz company. Who said shut everything down and open a window, a tech is on his way.
Oops.
Guy arrives with his handy little carbon monoxide measuring machine. We were at 1000 ppm of CO (acceptable levels are in the range of 0-10 ppm). This would explain the headaches and possibly the fact that I'm having trouble getting my asthma under control this winter.
Oops again.
He says, forget opening a window, you need to open all the doors. Wide. Immediately. Which we did for 45 minutes while he proceeded to cap our furnace and render it useless.
Need I remind you this is Montreal at 6 pm on a January evening? Just sayin'. (Surprisingly though, the temperature didn't go below 15 degrees, which, while chilly is still quite livable with big wool socks and a wool sweater. Of course I'd prefer this happened to us in Florida where it's always warm, but had we been living in Florida our little adventure wouldn't have happened in any case.)
It seems the furnace has to basically be taken completely apart, thoroughly cleaned and tested. Taken apart. Cleaned. Rebuilt.
The guy who's been cleaning it for all these years was probably just doing what we did, vacuuming it. For this we paid good money.
Needless to say, he's not bloody cleaning my furnace again.
I should force him to come clean the soot off the walls, windows, floors and repaint the house, which definitely needs it now.
Bleh.
11 comments:
oh man that stinks (literally).
I was in furnace pain about two years ago and I lucked out having a high school buddy that gave me a nice deal on a fancy new gas furnace. stay warm amiga!
We have gas for our stove and water heater. One afternoon Mr. Pop was outside on the side of the yard where the gas tank is buried. He thought he could smell gas. We called the gas company. The gas guy came out and discovered the pipe that took the gas into the house was busted. He red flagged our house and turned everything off. He said when they came back they would have to tear down the side of my kitchen to get to the broken pipe. I told him no he wouldn't. So they sent another guy a few days later and he found the busted pipe right outside the house, where I had tried to tell the first guy it was. What began as an "oh my god, you're gonna do what to my kitchen" turned into a five minute repair.
I have no idea how a furnace even works because like you said, even when it's cold down here, it's not all that cold. 15 degrees? I would freeze to death for sure.
You probably want to get some sort of detector so if anything should happen in the future, it can warn you.
Furiousball - It should be fixed today or tomorrow...
Pop - keep in mind that my 15 degrees is Celsius. So that's upper 50s in Farenheit. Not so bad all in all. And we're definitely getting a carbon monoxide detector - though the soot was so bad the smoke detector went off. Still carbon monoxide poisoning is not the way I want to go.
Jazz, that's scary! I'm glad you are okay, but you probably lost a few brain cells. I doubt anyone will notice, though. I hope everything is taken care of today. Stay warm, but do it safely!
After the thing is fixed, just concentrate on Saturday. That's all you really need to remember.
Oh no!
Geez, all that money gone for a sh*tty job and a chance at death.
Grrrrrrrr.
Want me to get'em, boss?
Hey lil sister, if you want to commit suicide with CO poisoning at least wait until you've re-written your will in my favour. There is a lot to be said for electric heating, not the least being that nobody comes to cleans the pipes. ;o)
Oh, sorry to hear that. I hate dealing with repair people who may or may not be doing what you're paying them to do. Sounds like mild weather for January in Montreal though, so maybe the gods are watching out for you.
Geewits - Brain cells. As if I can afford to lose any of those... God knows I seem to be losing them at an amazing rate whatever the amount of CO in the air.
Ticknart - Saturday Saturday Saturday. I figure I might as well concentrate right away, they're fixing it (i hope) as we speak. Or rather as I type.
Tai - Go at 'em my little pitbull
BB - Yeah, well, unfortunately electric heating isn't really an option. And I promise next time I try to kill myself I'll put you on my will. You'll be getting tons of books you probably wouldn't like.
Jill - Yeah it isn't so bad these days. Probably in the 20s (farenheit) so quite warm.
Oh, poor you. That is horrible. Don't you hate that kind of shoddy workmanship? In the dead of winter to have your furnace pack it in is not soothing. Which, of course, reminds me that I should have our serviced and get everything cleaned.
Ian - You do that. Because your furnace crapping out on you ain't no fun. And hope whoever is servicing it is doing a good job of it.
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