HVAC and Insulation From a Working Tech
Dana Sorensen · July 7, 2026
A smoke detector isn’t just a smoke detector — and believing otherwise is a mistake that quietly puts sleeping families in danger every single night. I confirmed this again last spring while running a home performance audit in a newer suburban build — the kind of tightly insulated, well-maintained house that gives off every impression … Read more
Dana Sorensen · July 7, 2026
Standing on a ladder in a Draper hallway last spring, cover off, I’m looking straight into a photoelectric chamber that’s supposed to sense fire — and this particular unit had gone off three separate times that week for reasons that had nothing to do with fire: a pot of pasta water reaching a boil, a … Read more
Dana Sorensen · July 7, 2026
Why does one CO detector chirp feel like nothing at all while another sends you sprinting outside with the kids at 3 a.m.? Because the two sounds aren’t carrying the same message — and mixing them up is exactly how people end up either evacuating for nothing or ignoring something that could actually kill them. … Read more
Dana Sorensen · July 6, 2026
Early on, I made an assumption that still bothers me when I think about it. A neighbor’s kitchen had a CO alarm mounted right by the hallway, batteries fresh, unit tested and working — so I moved on without ever pulling out my own meter to check ambient levels near the furnace. Weeks later that … Read more
Dana Sorensen · July 5, 2026
Thirty-five parts per million. That’s the figure my calibrated CO meter settled on inside a home office in a suburb outside Salt Lake City last spring — and the reading came a full two hours after the vehicle responsible for it had already pulled out of the driveway. The homeowner had been waking up with … Read more
Dana Sorensen · July 4, 2026
My meter clocks 2,400 PPM at seven in the morning, sensor still sitting on the nightstand where I left it overnight, inside the master bedroom of a newer, tightly built townhome. Fifteen-plus years running home performance assessments, and this is one of those readings that instantly reframes a whole case. The couple living here had … Read more
Dana Sorensen · July 3, 2026
Owning a slick air quality gadget does not mean your household is protected from carbon monoxide poisoning — and that false sense of security nearly caught up with a client of mine. Picture a homeowner (we’ll call her Karen) who’d just splurged on one of those trendy smart air monitors, the kind with a polished … Read more
Dana Sorensen · July 3, 2026
Years back, I made the same call the fire marshal ended up making on Greg’s case — I told a worried neighbour their detector was probably just faulty and needed swapping out. That bit of advice very nearly cost someone their safety, and it’s a lesson I’ve carried ever since. Take Greg, a neighbour of … Read more
Dana Sorensen · July 2, 2026
No spec sheet, no installation manual, and no code book will ever spell this out for you: an alarm can be fully compliant and still fail your family completely, purely because of where it happened to get mounted. I relearned that the hard way last spring on a call where a homeowner woke to her … Read more
Dana Sorensen · July 1, 2026
Forty percent output — that’s what my handheld light meter registered when I aimed it into the optical chamber of a hallway smoke detector I’d just pulled down off its bracket. I was at a house in the suburbs on what should’ve been a routine ductwork check, up in the attic, when the homeowner mentioned … Read more