Tuesday, March 3, 2009

More Vacation Unexpectedness

About mid-vacation week we got a little surprise....and it was not a pleasant one!!!

We put Devin down for a nap on Wednesday and Erick and I went into the basement to tackle some organizing projects (do you have any idea how long it took me to convince him to do this??). Anyway, as we walked down into the basement we could tell something was wrong immediately. There was a smell, a pretty potent, sort of gassy smell and so we called the National Grid (natural gas) Company to come and check it out. Boy, they do a great job of scaring you! "Don't touch anything! Don't turn anything on or off!" Which is for our own benefit, I know, but still...we were already scared as it was.

The man arrives with his hand held beeping machine (another scary feature) and walks in and asks for the basement. He doesn't like it very much when I try to be a a nice host and turn on the basement light for him (oops!) After a few minutes of him in the basement and lots of beeping, Erick heads down. We find out that it is not gas, but CARBON MONOXIDE. Yes, CARBON MONOXIDE IN MY HOUSE!!! Not a comforting feeling! I panicked and started opening the doors and windows to air the place out. The National Grid guys narrows down the problem to our furnace. GREAT!

We call in a Heating and Cooling Company. They tell us that our furnace is 27 years old. They can not find a leak or blockage in the chamber that is throwing out so much CO but there is definitely a malfunction in the furnace and recommend that we replace it since we can not run the current furnace (aka heat which is a necessity in New England!).

So the next day and $2600 later, we had a new furnace, heat, and no Carbon Monoxide. Honestly, I could think of several other ways I would have rather spent $2600 on my vacation....oh well.

2 comments:

Stacey said...

Wow that is scary. At least you notice it. That sucks that is was so much money.

Joanna said...

Holy cow. I'm so glad that you guys caught the problem. I know that spending $2600 stinks, but I don't even want to think about the alternative.