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 heating efficiently distributed the poison throughout.
It was unsettling for sure. If we ran the generator at night and if I did not have a CO dectector, we would be dead.
You can see from the pics there is hardly any crack under the door. The cable of course creates a small gap.
In studying what happened I learned a number of things. One of which was that non-ethanol fuel that I use in the generator (because it has a great shelf life) creates a lot more CO gas than ethanol boosted gas- a lot more.
https://emerginginvestigators.org/articles/21-188/pdf
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