Back in the day before carbon monoxide detectors, coal gas killed my grandmother.
Had weird a thing here once.
Had been keeping a fire, then it got real warm one day.
I came home from work, and the carbon monoxide detector was going off.
Took it outside, it quit.
Came in, back to beeping.
Took a deep breath, ran to the basement and opened the door.
Stayed out awhile, after the beeper quit.
There was a small fire in the furnace still.
I think, the flu reversed due to the outside temps, or else it just
kind of lost draw. The furnace was pushing the exhaust out the intake.
The coal in the fire was past coked. It was burning real clean.
Had an incident burning Pittsburgh Seam coal.
It plugged the pipe.
Wife called me at work, middle of the night.
House was full of smoke.
She had the windows open, that made the furnace burn making it worse.
Had to shut down the draft, pull off the pipes and plug the flu pipe,
And clean the metal pipes to the chimney.
While she was setting up fans to vent the house.
That one could have really went bad.
