Here’s a story from my past. It’s the time I left my home town for a job in a new city. I had secured an apartment and moved all my belongings there, now I was there for good and unpacking and assembling things. I had the weekend to get as much accomplished as possible before starting my new job.
I had my cat, Mess, to keep me company. He was a pretty chill cat and the change of environment didn’t really faze him. He settled in quickly while I kept doing my work. But something was really weird about the whole process. I couldn’t tell if I was just tired from the move or just overwhelmed with it, but I was constantly wiped out. I could work for a hour or so, but then I would have to rest. That’s not the way I was in my 20’s.
Regardless, I pressed on, taking short breaks to rest up while I kept unpacking. In one of the boxes, I found my CO detector. Living up north with gas heaters, it was a fairly normal practice to have one or more of these, especially where I grew up – so many old houses. Without thinking much about it, I plugged the detector in and kept right on going.
You can probably tell where this story is going already. And sure enough, in probably about five minutes, the alarm started blaring. I’d never had the detector go off before, so I was confused. Before I yanked it out of the wall, I saw the digital display said 150, which is the parts-per-million of CO detected. I thought the detector went bad somehow from the move (decreased mental function, right?) so I plugged it back in. As a normally-functioning person would expect, the alarm went off again. So I grabbed an extension cord and ran the detector outside. The display read zero. Well, now.
I called the apartment office and explained the situation. They told me that was normal because I was in a corner apartment next to the parking lot and car exhaust fumes would collect there. I pushed back and said I didn’t think these numbers were normal. Even if that was normal, WTF? With resignation, they said they could have the gas company come out the next day and test it. That’s about as good as I was going to get, so I went to bed in my oxygen-deprived apartment.
The next day, the office manager came over and we waited for the gas company. When the worker showed up and knocked on the door, he had his testing device in his hand and he was pissed – legitimately angry. “Do you see these levels I’m getting on my reader?” I didn’t, but I took his word for it. He came into the apartment and tested the different rooms and declared the apartment unsafe. The apartment manager was highly embarrassed and immediately set me up with a furnished apartment until they could resolve the issue.
It turned out that the hot water tank in the apartment above me had a leaky flue, which was sending CO into my apartment. So, problem solved and life went on. But I always felt terrible for Mess. I was able to leave the apartment for meals and whatnot, but he was in that CO environment 24 hours a day. Cats sleep most all day anyway, so how could I tell the difference? I guess he was probably lucky to even survive that incident, but he probably lost a lot of brain cells.
I live in an all-electric environment now and have always retained a slight distrust of gas-powered devices, despite the benefits they might offer like being cheaper or more efficient. I also have a slight paranoia about CO. This story came to mind because I recently just got my garage back at my house, so I can park my car in it, but I’m finding I’m (probably excessively and irrationally) spooked about the exhaust fumes from the car. Maybe it’s time to buy another CO detector.
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