HVAC and Insulation From a Working Tech
Last spring, I got a call from a homeowner in a panic. Her CO detector had gone off in the middle of the night — but she wasn’t sure whether to trust it. “It’s been going off for thirty seconds and stopped,” she told me. “Should we leave?” I told her to get everyone outside … Read more
I got a call last spring from a homeowner in the suburbs of Salt Lake City — let’s call her Karen. She’d just replaced every ionization-only smoke detector in her house after reading that they’re slow to detect smoldering fires, which are responsible for the majority of home fire deaths. Smart move. But when she … Read more
I was called out to a home last winter for what the homeowner described as a “furnace smell.” She’d had the same CO detector on her wall for six years and felt confident her home was safe — it had never gone off, so everything must be fine, right? When I got there with my … Read more
I was doing a home performance audit last spring — routine stuff, blower door test, duct leakage, the works — when the homeowner mentioned she’d been waking up with headaches nearly every morning for six months. She’d already ruled out mold, seen her doctor twice, and replaced her mattress. Before I even pulled out my … Read more
Last spring, I got a call from a homeowner in a newer subdivision — let’s call her Karen. She’d woken up at 2 a.m. with a headache and nausea, chalked it up to bad takeout, and gone back to sleep. The next morning, her carbon monoxide alarm was chirping. Turned out her furnace heat exchanger … Read more
Last February, I got a call from a homeowner in a suburb about thirty miles north of me. She’d been dealing with headaches every single evening for about six weeks. Thought it was stress, then a sinus infection, then maybe the new candles her daughter had given her for Christmas. Her doctor had run bloodwork. … Read more
Last spring I got a call from a homeowner in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon. She was at work, about forty minutes away, and her neighbor had just texted her that smoke was pouring out of her garage. Her smoke alarms — three of them, all hardwired, all up to code — were screaming … Read more
I’ve been doing home performance assessments for over fifteen years, and I still remember the call that changed how I think about indoor air quality. A young couple in a newer, well-insulated townhome had been complaining for months about chronic fatigue, morning headaches, and what they described as “brain fog” that lifted every time they … Read more
Last spring, I was doing a home performance audit for a family in a newer suburb — nice house, well-insulated, the kind of place you’d assume was buttoned up tight on safety. I spotted three smoke detectors in the hallway and kitchen area. All three were ionization units. Standard stuff you’d grab off a hardware … Read more
I want to start with a call I got on a Tuesday morning last February. A homeowner — let’s call her Karen — had just bought one of those popular smart air quality monitors. The kind with the sleek app interface that tracks temperature, humidity, VOCs, and CO2. She was proud of it. Said she … Read more