Ward !4 is right.  Now is the time to see if squirrels or raccoons have filled up your chimney with their nests last spring.   And I have found chimneys where the bricks have collapsed and closed off the flue.

Amazing to find out that above the visible area inside my chimney...broken pieces of the old clay liner of the chimney are blocking exhaust fumes from escaping our home...it's blocked good...and I don't guess we'd have found if I hadn't followed my instincts and not hesitated to check such a place! 

NOTE: Years ago, my cousin-who worked for a living doing "heating & cooling" found a blockage at my old house and he showed me that skill of "Drafting" above with a lighter/paper/candle... It's unbelievable to not see it sucked up into the chimney and realize it's backing up INSIDE OUR HOME! He yelled at me, fixed the problem, and went on to die a couple months later from a tragic motorcycle accident.... Every year, I check those areas like clockwork with the words he spoke close to heart...

MAKE TIME FOR THIS CHECKUP ON YOUR HOME! 

Of course I believe that there is malicious damage, and I can prove it....but, is that going to save my life and the life of my daughter today? NOPE....Just gotta keep on plugging away....

I am surprised to still be living after all the blogs over the last 2 years... God knows when my time will be and that's it.... It's not like the FBI is coming over for lunch to see the unbelievable damages...now is it? And even if they did come, what would they do, take fingerprints???? 

Skip to my Lou! 

Love Dianna....

DISRUPT IT! 

On Friday, we found the problem. We worked Friday, Saturday, and Sunday repairing & venting the chimmey. Along the way, I had been getting headaches which I mostly attributed to stress. Yet, after finding and repairing the problem, I got severely ill Saturday night into Sunday morning and again Sunday night I feeling awkward....

I kept checking the CO detector and it kept reading "O"...I ended up calling the non-emergency fire number for someone to bring out the CO Detectors from the fire department. Minutes later, the sirens arrived and so did EMS...Our CO levels were high and they recommended we go to the ER with them. So, off we went to get our OXYGEN treatments and possibly other treatments had it been any worse.

I lay in that hospital bed thinking about how easily I could have "DIED" without a fight, without a word, and in my sleep. It was actually quite scary to think how something like Carbon Monoxide is so very dangerous.... the SILENT KILLER! 

We are better now...but the entire ordeal has been quite scary.... scary to death! 

I believe the detector is good, but since it had been going on for approximately 30 days (when furnace was turned on)...I would believe that we were beyond lucky and blessed to be alive! 
Thanks be to God for my ICE QUEEN who opens doors and windows to get fresh air regularly...Ms. Angelina herself was absolutely my saving grace! 

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My chimney has a clean out that I clean yearly and use a mirror to look up at the liner. I started doing this when the gas company was out for a meter read and found carbon monoxide in the basement (I have radiant heat). I had a flue pipe that had rusted on the underside and was exhausting into the basement. When replacing the flue pipe, I discovered bricks and dirt up to the flue pipe line which is why I started cleaning the chimney. We now have a new chimney liner. The rusty flue was a clue to the deterioration of the liner. It is common to the older Cleveland housing stock to have crumbling chimney liners and bad flue pipes.

Having a detector is not enough. It is sort of like those "idiot lights" in the car. We hope that they tell us when the gas tank or oil is low, but we'd be fools not to check them out. I have 2 detectors. One is plugged into an outlet. One is battery operated. I still will check the flue and the chimney yearly.

being exposed to CO for several weeks...invariably. By the time, I got the detector, the flue/chimney had already been cleared/vented...thus the house cleared of CO rather quickly from fresh air from lots of traffic over the weekend...and kids opening windows too... But, the CO had to still be in our body from earlier exposure...at least that's my understanding of it. Our detector is good. The Fire Dept CO detector had the same readings. Yet, there is another special CO detector for the human beings that I never knew about before these events...