n8n
Well-known member
good afternoon everyone
well, this morning was fun. Just for background, I live in a row house that was built in the 1990s sometime and it appears to have the original HVAC but a newish gas water heater. Landlady likes me I think because I'm handy so I save her $$ on stuff that I can take care of myself. Have one housemate, a lovely African woman (this isn't a race thing, will explain in a minute) and her young son who's a cool little kid. Anyway I'm on the 2nd floor, they are in the basement where laundry, HVAC, WH all are. Stove is gas as well but I'm pretty sure this is irrelevant to the discussion.
Anyway, I woke up this morning and was quite warm. Looked at my phone on the Nest app (there is a 3rd gen Nest thermostat, and that was my second project after moving in, getting that working correctly, right after repairing the washing machine, so everything is set up on my account) apparently housemate had woken up, was cold (heat is set to 67 degrees @ 5 AM) so turned the heat up to 70-something. So, I guess while I was miserable all summer she was actually comfortable as the AC struggled to cool the house below the high 70s... while now that it's cool-ish, my comfortable is apparently unpleasantly cold for someone who grew up in Sierra Leone. Ah well, such is life, I can deal. I grunted and blinked my way into the shower and barely got some soap on me when the CO alarms start going off. These are newish (I installed them when I moved in, early summer) First Alert/BRK SC7010B-3 combination photoelectric/CO alarms which I purchased because the existing smoke alarms appeared to be original to the house, and the one in the basement was missing. There's three of them, one on each level in the hallway (we weren't required to have them within the bedrooms back when this place was built, otherwise there'd be four more... ugh. Damn things are so expensive, too, and they've apparently gone up in price significantly in less than six months, but I digress.) Couldn't not have them because a) life safety is what I do for a living so having a missing smoke alarm would just be wrong and b) when I changed my renter's insurance I was specifically asked about smoke alarms, sprinkler, and the presence of fire extinguishers (the latter I also provided, thankfully I was able to get those from work so that was much less painful) which I never have been before.
So anyway, now I suspect that the furnace needs to be serviced and possibly the heat exchanger is cracked, although hopefully it's just a matter of adjusting the flame. 2nd possibility in my mind is that because I was taking a nice hot steamy shower while the furnace was on, somehow the water heater wasn't venting properly but being drawn into the HVAC return, although again if it were burning right the exhaust should be relatively clean. EDIT: now that I think about that I think this is unlikely as I had the HVAC fan set to run 15 minutes every hour and also if that were the issue it would have shown up with the AC running. So I'm back to it's likely the furnace either needing adjustment or a new heat exchanger. Neither one of us were using the stove/oven or drying laundry when this went off (and oddly, I actually cleaned all the stove burners over the weekend in a fit of domestic activity and as part of a more general kitchen clean-up). I'm certain that this is above the level of my actually wanting to make repairs but I am now curious how I could troubleshoot should the issue occur again.
Again, I've had the new combo smoke/CO alarms installed since June and this is the first time the CO has gone off (and the smoke has never gone off) since I installed them. Heat has been on a couple times already but I think there's only been one day looking at Nest history where it's run more than an hour a day - that's another weird thing about this house, it will not cool off, it stays ~70F or more even when it's in the 50s outside, not sure if it's solar heating, heat creeping in from next door neighbors who like it much warmer, or what.
I just spent my lunch break purchasing two electric space heaters off FBMP in case we have to shut down the furnace (I kept thinking I should buy some just in case but never wanted to spend the money; fortunately a nice gentleman had three less than 10 miles from my office and he'd only sold one by the time I reached out to him) but beyond that I am not sure what I can do. I see that there's hand held CO meters available from Klein, Extech, Triplett, etc. in the $100-150 range, and also some less expensive generic ones. Would one of those be a worthwhile buy to try to pinpoint where the issue may be? What kind of meter would a professional use in this situation? Is there such a thing as one that will detect both CO and natural gas? (I remember I had a plug in one at my last place that would do both which seems like would be a handy thing to have in a handheld) Are the CO sensor parts generally replaceable? I know that typically any CO detector is not guaranteed to work after 10 years because they have a finite lifespan.
I'm thinking that any issue will likely be a "call a professional" type situation. But, I can't resist wanting to do my own troubleshooting so landlady doesn't get taken to the cleaners by repair guy. Any thoughts/advice would be greatly appreciated.
well, this morning was fun. Just for background, I live in a row house that was built in the 1990s sometime and it appears to have the original HVAC but a newish gas water heater. Landlady likes me I think because I'm handy so I save her $$ on stuff that I can take care of myself. Have one housemate, a lovely African woman (this isn't a race thing, will explain in a minute) and her young son who's a cool little kid. Anyway I'm on the 2nd floor, they are in the basement where laundry, HVAC, WH all are. Stove is gas as well but I'm pretty sure this is irrelevant to the discussion.
Anyway, I woke up this morning and was quite warm. Looked at my phone on the Nest app (there is a 3rd gen Nest thermostat, and that was my second project after moving in, getting that working correctly, right after repairing the washing machine, so everything is set up on my account) apparently housemate had woken up, was cold (heat is set to 67 degrees @ 5 AM) so turned the heat up to 70-something. So, I guess while I was miserable all summer she was actually comfortable as the AC struggled to cool the house below the high 70s... while now that it's cool-ish, my comfortable is apparently unpleasantly cold for someone who grew up in Sierra Leone. Ah well, such is life, I can deal. I grunted and blinked my way into the shower and barely got some soap on me when the CO alarms start going off. These are newish (I installed them when I moved in, early summer) First Alert/BRK SC7010B-3 combination photoelectric/CO alarms which I purchased because the existing smoke alarms appeared to be original to the house, and the one in the basement was missing. There's three of them, one on each level in the hallway (we weren't required to have them within the bedrooms back when this place was built, otherwise there'd be four more... ugh. Damn things are so expensive, too, and they've apparently gone up in price significantly in less than six months, but I digress.) Couldn't not have them because a) life safety is what I do for a living so having a missing smoke alarm would just be wrong and b) when I changed my renter's insurance I was specifically asked about smoke alarms, sprinkler, and the presence of fire extinguishers (the latter I also provided, thankfully I was able to get those from work so that was much less painful) which I never have been before.
So anyway, now I suspect that the furnace needs to be serviced and possibly the heat exchanger is cracked, although hopefully it's just a matter of adjusting the flame. 2nd possibility in my mind is that because I was taking a nice hot steamy shower while the furnace was on, somehow the water heater wasn't venting properly but being drawn into the HVAC return, although again if it were burning right the exhaust should be relatively clean. EDIT: now that I think about that I think this is unlikely as I had the HVAC fan set to run 15 minutes every hour and also if that were the issue it would have shown up with the AC running. So I'm back to it's likely the furnace either needing adjustment or a new heat exchanger. Neither one of us were using the stove/oven or drying laundry when this went off (and oddly, I actually cleaned all the stove burners over the weekend in a fit of domestic activity and as part of a more general kitchen clean-up). I'm certain that this is above the level of my actually wanting to make repairs but I am now curious how I could troubleshoot should the issue occur again.
Again, I've had the new combo smoke/CO alarms installed since June and this is the first time the CO has gone off (and the smoke has never gone off) since I installed them. Heat has been on a couple times already but I think there's only been one day looking at Nest history where it's run more than an hour a day - that's another weird thing about this house, it will not cool off, it stays ~70F or more even when it's in the 50s outside, not sure if it's solar heating, heat creeping in from next door neighbors who like it much warmer, or what.
I just spent my lunch break purchasing two electric space heaters off FBMP in case we have to shut down the furnace (I kept thinking I should buy some just in case but never wanted to spend the money; fortunately a nice gentleman had three less than 10 miles from my office and he'd only sold one by the time I reached out to him) but beyond that I am not sure what I can do. I see that there's hand held CO meters available from Klein, Extech, Triplett, etc. in the $100-150 range, and also some less expensive generic ones. Would one of those be a worthwhile buy to try to pinpoint where the issue may be? What kind of meter would a professional use in this situation? Is there such a thing as one that will detect both CO and natural gas? (I remember I had a plug in one at my last place that would do both which seems like would be a handy thing to have in a handheld) Are the CO sensor parts generally replaceable? I know that typically any CO detector is not guaranteed to work after 10 years because they have a finite lifespan.
I'm thinking that any issue will likely be a "call a professional" type situation. But, I can't resist wanting to do my own troubleshooting so landlady doesn't get taken to the cleaners by repair guy. Any thoughts/advice would be greatly appreciated.
