excitement

-Wednesday 12/2-

11:35pm ish- Return home from Velour- Pyf was doing sound for the Local Natives (from CA- loved them!), Desert Noises (love them too), etc. Although it's late and we're ready for bed, I've still got some things to do- like baking some pumpkin bars for a meal I'm taking to some friends the next day.

We get out of the car and I hear a beeping noise- not super loud.
Me: "Do you hear that? Where's it coming from?"
Pyf: "It's probably just coming from someone's car or something.."

Walk past our front window and up to the door- beeping gets louder.

Open door- beeping is coming from our house.

What we find: It's the carbon monoxide detector that we asked our landlord to install about a month ago after hearing about the scary situation down by BYU where several girls got carbon monoxide poisoning (one of them being my brother's friend).

Beeping is still going. I'm standing by the front door trying to figure out what to do. Pyf heads upstairs to check it out- Finds the instructions for the detector which say to press the re-start button and, if it goes off again within 6 minutes, high carbon monoxide levels are really being detected and to call "your emergency services".

Pyf says to wait a few mins and see what happens. He takes a bathroom break- I'm still scared to death standing by the front door. The bathroom break is taking a while and, although the beeping hasn't started again...

11:41pm- I call the police dept in hopes that they can ease my fears. The dispatcher asks if we're feeling ok (yes, we just barely walked in the door) and if we could smell any gas or anything (no, CO is odorless, colorless, etc)!

After about 1.5 mins on the phone, the alarm goes off again. She gets our info and says she'll send someone out.

Pyf emerges from the b-room. Goes upstairs to open some windows and takes the batteries out of the detector (since it's almost midnight and we don't want to wake up the whole neigborhood!)

2 mins later..a cop speeds around the corner (he was just chillin a street over). Asks if we're feeling alright and if we could smell anything (again- yes..and no. We think he was confused thinking about propane or something?) He tells us to stay outside while we wait for the paramedics and firemen (cop tells us that they all must respond to calls).. Since it's freeezing outside, he offers that we can sit in his car, but we're ok for the time being.

3 mins later...we hear sirens and start thinking- is that for us?? (Our neighbors are seriously going to hate us- especially those with small children!) The sirens are turned off as soon as they hit the neighborhood (thank goodness) and we see the lights coming from the next street over...

Problem: The ambulance has stopped at 730 E 1700 S instead of 1720 S. Cop starts talking smack about the paramedics (lovingly!)- it takes them a good 7 mins to finally get around the corner to our place! (The whole time their lights were still on- We're hoping they didn't wake the older couple that lives there and give them a heart attack!)

Fire truck arrives shortly after the paramedics. All 5-6 guys (cop, paramedics, firemen) tell us to stay outside as they head in (to our disaster of a house- so embarrassing)! I think it was the firemen that had the gear to check the CO levels. They walk around upstairs and downstairs and find that the levels are above normal, but nothing super bad supposedly (they were fine walking around in there for a bit- some of it had aired out I guess b/c Pyf had opened the windows)...

After a bit, they tell us we're ok to go inside- We walk downstairs with them as they check a couple things in the kitchen. (Ambulance and firetruck lights are still on- and we notice a couple of our neighbors lights have now turned on. Great.) They commend us for calling them and told us we "did the right thing". They tell us that the levels are high enough that they want Questar (gas) to come out. They tell us to head back outside (where it's probably 23 degrees! ahhh)..

They close up all the windows so Questar can get an accurate reading when they come. They follow us outside and we chat and wait. (They were all the nicest guys! I had to apologize that we didn't even make our bed that day! They reassured me that our house was nothin compared to many of the places they've seen. I wish I had had some pumpkin bars to give them! We also joked as I offered that they take a bag of tortilla chips that were just sitting there in our family room in a pile of grocery bags that had yet to be unloaded from earlier. Lovely.)

They tell us we need to wait outside until the on-call Questar guy shows up- which could be up to an hour! We debate about what we're going to do and decide to just chill (chill- get it? ha!) in the car. The "emergency services" get ready to leave and I have Pyf grab a second coat for me and my slippers, then we head to the car.

Probably 30 mins later, the shaggy bleached hair Questar man arrives. He heads into the house with Pyf and starts testing around. He finds there is definitely something goin on...

Long story short (ha!): He says that when the CO starts to get at a high level it is around 250 ppm (parts per minute?) or something. (I still don't fully understand all of the terminology but) he says ours is reading at 4,000 ppm and, "if you hadn't caught this or just ignored the alarm, you may not have woken up in the morning."

Whoa.

They open all the windows again to clear the place out. He says that the water heater is the main source of the problem. He begins making tags to leave on the appliances with issues so a "heating specialist" can come out and get everything fixed. He recommends that we call our landlord first thing in the morning so we can get everything worked out. He gets a signature from Pyf and wishes us a good rest of the night.

2am ish: Questar man heads out to his truck to leave. Pyf comes to get me in the car and, at that point, I'm not really sure what's going on- if we were going to be able to sleep at home or what. Pyf explains everyting and tells me that everything is ok. He had walked around the house with the guy before he left who showed him that all the levels were back down to 0 and he had turned the gas off. Pyf reassures me that, with the gas off, nothing can happen.

I'm still kinda freaked out and am debating whether I want to sleep out on the lawn in a tent! I finally come to my senses and trust that everything will be ok.

I try to wash my face while we still have a bit of warm water and we finally get to bed around 2:15.


The next day, we called our landlord and thanked him for installing the CO detector promptly as we had requested. He came over with a "heating specialist" later on in the day and got everything fixed. I guess the water heater needed to be completely cleaned out and also the flue on the roof was pretty smashed down, leaving little room for any of the heat (or whatever it is that comes from the water heater and the furnace!) to escape.

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the rather round heating man in his blue jumpsuit whistle "Frere Jacques" about a million times over and over as he worked. It was a good end to a pretty crazy 12 hours. He told us that Questar will be coming out again to follow-up.


Lessons learned:
1. Make sure your house is always atleast somewhat presentable because you never know who might be coming over.
2. Everyone must, I repeat..MUST, have a carbon monoxide detector!

The End.

(bummed that I didn't get a picture of our "emergency
services" friends! My camera was inside...)