Dangers with Simple Living
For the past three weeks I have been feeling less than my usual self. Less energy, a dull headache, and sleepy most of the time. My heart rate has been in the high 80's which is super high for me as I usually have a pulse of about 57. I kept wondering what was going on. Was I eating different ? Was it some residual from the cold that I had ? Just could not figure it out.
Then today, Emery checked his heart rate and it was in the 90's and he has been feeling weird, not as good a memory, which his is profound normally, and he has had stomach upsets for the last few weeks.
The mystery thickened. Both of us with strange complaints.
The wheels in my mind started turning and would not stop until I found the cause.
Simple actually. Emery had worked extra hard this past year sealing the house up for winter and adding insulation in the attic. Our little house is just about as air tight as you can get. We were experiencing Carbon Monoxide poisoning ! The house had been heated non stop for three weeks with the woodstove going non stop. And with my cold, I had been staying in the house far more than I normally do.
We ran to the store to get a carbon monoxide detector and were shocked at the level in the house. It was so high we could not imagine how we have not been suffering more.
We are guessing the seal on the wood stove door is worn for one thing, emitting the gas into the house. We know our chimney is clear, so its not that.
Fortunately it was a relatively warm day, in the high 50's so we opened every single door and window in the house. After a bit of time the air in the house was at a normal level.
Now to clean this all our of our system. I had to almost laugh at the irony of what I did just yesterday. I was thinking since my heart rate was up, perhaps I was stressed about something, so I sat in front of the woodstove where it was toasty warm and practiced deep breathing for 25 minutes. Its a wonder I didn't die ! All that poison being pulled into my lungs in such deep prolonged breathing.
I am now a confirmed believer in having a Carbon Monoxide detector in every house.
Oh by the way, we are replacing the worn seal on the woodstove door this week.
Comments
Our family had carbon monoxide poisoning once when our furnace malfunctioned in the middle of the night. We would all have died except that our cat kept jumping on my dad until he broke out of his fog and realized something was terribly wrong. Our doctor told us to spend the day outside, which we were able to do since it wasn't too cold (it was late October). We got our chaise lounges out and sat outside in our sleeping bags. Turned out to be an adventure, but it still amazes me how our cat knew to wake my dad...
Hugs,
Kelli
I'm glad things worked out well. My husband is a Heating and Cooling tech, and one year we bought loads of carbon monoxide detectors and gave them as Christmas gifts to friends and family. We actually are due to replace ours, and I think we need one on each level of the house, rather than just one in the main room.
My husband said he was feeling unusually tired and fuzzy also. We thought it was perhaps that the fire was using up too much of the oxygen in the room, so we opened up for a while and let the breeze through.
It was only when I read your post and showed it to him that either of us realised the problem could have been carbon monoxide. Whew! It turns out that although the seal round the door of the stove is OK, the glass window is a bit loose. So we won't be lighting the stove again till that is fixed. And today I bought a detector (the same model you illustrated). We have one of those little 'white spot' ones in the kitchem, next to our coal-fired kitchen stove, but I never realised there was equal danger from the woodburner in the living-room.
So once again, thank you!