Carbon Monoxide!?

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Weird. The smoke alarm went off, not incredibly odd when I am using the fireplace, but it wasn't the smoke detector. It was the CO alarm. I was totally surprised. It had never gone off as long as I have had one, over many many years. Yep, after resetting it a few times. It was getting a reading over 200 ppm CO. When I took it downstairs I got a reading near 300 ppm. I started getting light headed at this point. After thinking maybe the furnace heat exchanger failed and puzzling around a bit I figured out what happened. As part of the huge winter storm that recently covered almost half of the US, we lost our electricity. So, being well prepared, I rolled out the generator and started doing what I normally do. The generator (although it was completely outside) was creating CO to get in the house. Using the fireplace draft (and possibly other leaks) the whole house created a vacuum around the seal of the basement garage door. After the CO got into the house the forced air heat...
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Stellar Axis Art Project in Antarctica (Revisited)

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I just stumbled on this film (Stellar Axis link below) about an art project that I was involved with in Antarctica on the Solstice 2006. http://blog.theguysatwork.com/2006_12_17_archive.html

It was a moving experience watching the video for me. It really took me back there for an hour. Lita Albuquerque and I connected at some level when we met. I was one of the 51 volunteers at the end in the spiral. We rode out from McMurdo on "Ivan the Terrabus", (the only time I rode in Ivan). It probably took an hour to drive there out on the shelf. My memory of the participation was one of peace. When we started walking away from the center we were all quiet and the walking got a little awkward since all the stepping turned the ice shelf into irregular masses of granular snow and the hard bits of wind hardened shelf. At the end we all lied down and outstretched our arms. After a bit we started yelling "woos and woo-hoos" and such. There was laughter and good feelings.


Stellar Axis






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Carbon Monoxide!?

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Image
Weird. The smoke alarm went off, not incredibly odd when I am using the fireplace, but it wasn't the smoke detector. It was the CO alarm. I was totally surprised. It had never gone off as long as I have had one, over many many years. Yep, after resetting it a few times. It was getting a reading over 200 ppm CO. When I took it downstairs I got a reading near 300 ppm. I started getting light headed at this point. After thinking maybe the furnace heat exchanger failed and puzzling around a bit I figured out what happened. As part of the huge winter storm that recently covered almost half of the US, we lost our electricity. So, being well prepared, I rolled out the generator and started doing what I normally do. The generator (although it was completely outside) was creating CO to get in the house. Using the fireplace draft (and possibly other leaks) the whole house created a vacuum around the seal of the basement garage door. After the CO got into the house the forced air heat...
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