Yesterday I had a heating/air conditioning technician visit our home and take a look at the heating system, since we've been experiencing a lot of cold weather recently (see previous post) and the heater apparently couldnt' keep up with the cold temps, so much so that we constantly felt cold at home despite turing up the target temperature. I know nothing about heating/ air conditioning (along with knowing nothing about car repairs, bicycle repairs, electric wiring, water, gas, basically anything that has to do with utility/ machine maintenance in daily activities, so a technician was needed, even if the appointment had been suspiciously delayed from Monday to Friday because the technician was "sick" (seems like a telltale sign of Covid), so I masked up and luckily the technician was also very diligent about it as well.
I did NOT know that some air conditioning units, like mine, have a huge furnace in the center of it that looks like a double-piston stove, with a consistent fire heating up the central unit. And it's not the wimpy orange flame, it's the intense-looking blue flame that gets into temperatures I don't even think about. A little nervous about having flames like that turn on every time the heater needs to run, but if that's what is needed to keep the home warm, I'm reluctantly in favor. Next is that air filters needed to be swapped out every 3 months or so......which seems a little bit of an oversell by people in the air/heating industry like auto mechanics telling car owners to get their oil changed more often (JiffyLube always has a SURPRISE! Your car's air filter needs to be changed), but since this is the air that we're breathing in on a day to day basis and especially since I'm at home pretty much 23 hours of the day, investing in frequent fresh air filters seems reasonable. As a baby analogy since MJ and I hope to have a baby, it's like leaving the baby's diaper longer than necessary and letting waste accumulate in it......even if it's not yet ready to throw away, it just feels better to have a fresh bag in. (Unlike garbage and recycling, where MJ insists we fill garbage to the absolute brim before tying it and throwing it away, as the poor bag feels like it will vomit if it gets stuffed with just one more banana peel).
Another thing that the technician recommended was a carbon monoxide detector, to guard against carbon monoxide poisoning. I didn't know we needed one, nor heard of anyone ever getting one. The technician responded that he recently went to a home where there was a small leak in the gas pipes of this old woman's home who had kids in the home, and unbeknownst to everyone carbon monoxide was leaking out gradually, so that if they had slept one more night without the pipe getting fixed they probably all would have gotten sick and gone to the hospital, even possibly died. "All it takes is one; you hope you don't ever need it." He said. Normally I'd be skeptical, but I felt like (unlike most other service industry interactions where the serviceperson is just chatting you up to get the tip, that this technician was genuinely being nice and giving advice that he would tell a friend, not just a customer.) And the incentives didn't align: he told me to buy carbon monoxide detectors from online or at other stores, not his company or anything. So he wouldn't benefit from that advice except maybe from a good review from me. Can't hurt I guess, and I am a bit nervous about carbon monoxide after having slept in my car on numerous occasions without remembering to roll a window down to let in fresh air; who knows what could have happened if I let the motor run and also shut the windows. I may have cheated the death by carbon monoxide gods already! That'd be tempting fate to run afoul of that situation again. Every year, apparently 430 people die from CO poisoning in the US. That's not a lot in a country of 340 million people, but one is too many, and it seems like it's an easy risk to mitigate out of one's life.
On that note, it's a good idea to check furnaces and stoves to make sure it's fully off each night before going to bed; with the way we multi-task all the time it's inevitable to forget once in awhile; for me it's leaving the freezer or refrigerator door slightly ajar. By the time I realize it, all the ice cream has melted and I'm crying over spilt milk.
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