Thursday, February 7, 2008

I hate contractors!!


These are my fingers after running them over my dining room table. I'm really not that bad of a housekeeper. This is from soot that is all over our house. And I mean everywhere-tables, chairs, our brand new furniture, our newly painted walls, our new washer and dryer, our nasal passages, our lungs, everywhere.

Kevin and I noticed last week that Brynn's socks were getting very black and we couldn't figure out where she was going that was so dirty. Then, Kevin noticed his white robe that hangs on the back of the bathroom door was black. Same with the towels. It was really strange. Then we noticed a dark black line by a heat register. We finally figured out what had happened, we thought. Our furnace had a puff back which just means it malfunctioned and put the soot back into our house

I called our insurance company yesterday and talked to the adjuster, told him what the problem was and he just happened to be in the area so he stopped by to see it. The "soot ghosts" were everywhere-places we didn't even notice. We have a restoration company coming in tomorrow to start the cleanup. What a mess.

The truly scary thing is that we had our yearly furnace check up on January 11th. We noticed the smell of oil, the company came back and fixed the problem and told Kevin to get new air filters for it. They just forgot to tell either of us not to use the furnace because it was spewing huge amounts of carbon monoxide into our home. Huge Amounts. Fatal Amounts. Luckily, we like our house cold, so the furnace didn't run as often as it would in normal households or the outcome could have been deadly. Our detectors didn't go off, but we are installing a couple more in different areas just to be more safe.

We now have an engineer looking at our furnace, a clean up crew coming to spring clean a few months early and no primary heat source (luckily we also use wood to heat the house). And the furnace idiot doesn't think he did anything wrong. Brynn's snot has been discolored for a week now and we couldn't figure out why. Now we know. We have been breathing soot for almost a month. And slowly poisoning our systems. We could have lost our daughter. I could have lost my husband. And all because someone didn't do their job correctly.

Update: I just talked to my stepmom and she has soot on her walls too. Any guessese who did her furnace work?

4 comments:

Mamacita said...

Whoa. That's scary. I have to ask the $100,000.00 question.....are you going to buy a carbon monoxide detector immediately?

Julie said...

We have one detector already, but we are definitely buying a couple more.

Fliss and Mike Adventures said...

Glad everyone is fine... how scary... if it were me... basically I would be wanting answers from the company and really good ones at that...

Vivian M said...

Whoa....take pictures now of the soot all over the house. Go to a pulmonary specialist (all three of you) and have your lungs checked out. Save all your receipts, and once this is resolved send the company a certified letter and if you don't like their response take everything to a good lawyer.
Hope you are all ok. Will be keeping you all in our thoughts and prayers. Very scary.