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Showing posts from November 1, 2020

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 oout 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 (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 heating eff...
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The remnants of Hurricane Zeta hit us pretty good. This time it was wind, not rain with Delta a few weeks back. A lot of trees down; we were without power for a couple of days. I had the generator hooked up powering the entire house once I convinced myself the power wasn't coming back on for awhile. The generator did well and I think it may be the first time I truely needed the generator (in this case it kept the food frozen). It felt good that I was prepared and we enjoyed the family time. Here is a video I just found that shows the derailment story in Duluth from back in June. A real high energy railfan was there. This is the train I like to visit and have filmed with my drone. It's a marvel. It is wildly cool this guy caught the train as it derailed although he was about 1/2 mile away from where the cars flew from the track. The next video is the first minutes at the scene of the derailment.