HVAC and Insulation From a Working Tech
Last spring I got a call from a homeowner in a 1960s ranch-style house — great bones, well-maintained, no obvious red flags. She’d just had a new gas furnace installed by another company and wanted a second opinion on a slight smell near the utility room. When I arrived, I tested the space and found … Read more
A few years back, I got called out to a house in the suburbs — routine HVAC inspection, nothing dramatic. While I was up in the attic checking ductwork, the homeowner mentioned her smoke detector had been chirping. She figured it was a low battery. I climbed down, walked over to the hallway detector, and … 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
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
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