If you think that your home safety depends on a carbon monoxide detector only in the winter season, you’re wrong. Carbon monoxide (CO) detectors should be operational year-round to protect your family from carbon monoxide dangers that can occur any time of year.
Why is year-round protection a must?
People tend to think that only the use of a gas-powered furnace calls for a carbon monoxide detector; however, multiple other types of equipment in the home may utilize combustion and generate carbon monoxide. Any equipment in your western Colorado home that runs on fuel is combustible equipment, and poses a threat to your safety without a CO detector in place. This includes:
- Fireplaces
- Wood-burning stoves
- Water heaters powered by gas
- Gas-powered stoves
- Gas-powered clothes dryers
- Any of this same equipment powered by another type of fuel; for instance, oil
Shouldn’t combustible equipment operate safely?
If you maintain your equipment faithfully every year, it should operate safely. However, even well-maintained systems can fail. The best course of action you can take to preserve the safety of your household involves using CO detectors and properly maintaining equipment.
Annual maintenance allows your contractor to test the venting system, ensuring that it’s tightly sealed to prevent CO from accessing the home, and inspect the entire HVAC system to make sure back-drafting of CO won’t occur. Employing detectors puts a final step into place, ensuring you’ll be alerted to the presence of CO, should equipment malfunction.
Just how dangerous is CO?
Without a detector, you’ll have no way of knowing if CO levels in the home are dangerously high – until it’s too late. Carbon monoxide has no odor or color, so humans can’t detect it using any of the five senses. That’s where detectors come in: With a device that can read CO levels, you’ll learn whether the flu-like symptoms you’re experiencing are the result of a virus or some other common malady, or symptoms of potentially fatal CO poisoning.
For expert help selecting and installing carbon monoxide detectors in your western Colorado home, please contact us at Climate Control Company.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in Aspen, Vail and the surrounding Western slope communities in Colorado about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about carbon monoxide detectors and other HVAC topics, please visit our website.
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