Q: The service man tagged my furnace because of excessive carbon monoxide in the flue. Why should I care what the exhaust of my furnace is putting out, its going outside!
A: Alright, let’s have fun with flames! We can start by saying for sure that this is in no way any sort of government over reach into our sovereign rights and privileges. We don’t need another unenforced law and more bureaucracy examining my exhaust pipe contents, good, bad, or slightly stinky. What exits your flue pipe is on you and it’s between you and God, or whatever deity you find peace with. There are no exhaust police outside your home (perhaps in CA) as these fine public servants have better things to do. What matters is not the exhaust leaving your home, but the safety concerns before it exits.
An old proverb, “necessity is the mother of invention” applies well as to why we have rules and regulations on how your gas heater operates (and is installed). Much death, disaster, and destruction created the need for consistent safety standards from sea to shining sea. Generations of accumulated knowledge formulated the framework we all (should) use today. These rules weren’t designed to impede your freedom, but to allow you the freedom to safely live. A now infamous address to the nation by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld attempted to explain the known knowns, the known unknowns, and the unknown unknowns. His intent was clearly to explain the complexity of the issue and that we really don’t know what we don’t know until we find out we don’t know it. This is why we check for carbon monoxide on every gas service call as you can’t smell it, taste it, and don’t want to breathe it.
This time of year, we are doing zillions (a slight exaggeration) of fall maintenances and our technicians are running our combustion analyzers constantly. For our annual service contract customers, we have a year to year record of how things are running and can identify variations in carbon monoxide output that may indicate future problems. For the many demand service calls we do with new customers and older equipment all bets are off. Equipment that has not been properly maintained inevitably will run higher levels of CO, and then you will find an old dog just burning clean as a whistle. You just don’t know till you test.
Earlier this week, in a service call like thousands of others (actually no exaggeration there) in a seemly normal looking unit that was heating ok we discovered 500 parts per million of carbon monoxide in the flue. Your fine local gas utility, Northwestern Energy requires a warning tag at 200 PPM and a hazard tag at 400 PPM. Of course, this stinker was now immediately off line and come to find out there were numerous tiny little rust holes in the heat exchanger creating a fuel/air mixture dilution and potentially deadly levels of CO. We ordered a new heat exchanger, installed it, and now that baby runs at clean 34 PPM. BAM, problem identified, problem solved. Hopefully your heating contractor is using his or her combustion analyzer to properly check and maintain your happy heater. If not, give AirWorks a call at (406) 630-4170 and have a pleasant weekend (raking leaves).
