So I've been trying to get more sleep lately.
It's been a mixed bag so far, but I'm trying to get to bed earlier. Luckily for us, I have a harder time on weekends.
Around 1 AM Sunday morning, I was about to go to bed. This is earlier than the last few Saturday nights of 3 or 4 AM. I know, I have a problem. Anyway, I was just about to shut down the computer when the smoke alarm in the hallway upstairs goes off.
I run upstairs and try blowing air into it, because there's no smoke. And it isn't going off steady either. It's just beeping every couple of seconds.
I can smell ashes in the stove, however. Saturday was warm, about 55-60-degrees. I had started to get the fire going in the morning, but shut it down around 10 AM or so when I realized how warm it was. This turned out to be a big mistake, but only when you let about 15 hours roll by.
So the smoke alarm won't stop. I reach up, open it and yank the first battery out. (I won't leave it like this, but I figure pulling the battery should reset it). Only it doesn't stop, so I reach out and pull the second one. It's still going off. I swear, for a whole second, I was completely baffled. After that second, I realize it's not the smoke detector, it's the carbon monoxide detector a few feet over to my left.
Again, it's beeping every few seconds. The timing is weird, but I think that that batteries must be dying. I pull them and replace them with new ones. Except for the initial beep telling me that it's working, it's quite.
Still, carbon monoxide is odorless, colorless and deadly. I spend a little more time downstairs to see if anything happens. Around 2:30, I decide I really should go to bed.
At about 3:45 I wake up to both alarms going off. Not beeping, but full-blown get-the-hell-out alert status. I'm out of bed in a heartbeat and the hall if full of gray smoke. I call out for Tine and I race downstairs to make sure nothing is on fire. I'm fairly confident what I'm going to find, however.
The living room is a semi-thick gray fog.
The stove is belching smoke from the vents. Reverse airflow has cold air pushing down the chimney instead of warm air rising. Thinking about it now, the wood must have burnt out enough for the temperature to drop inside the stove. Enough so, that the air outside was able to push it's way in (I can't recall, but it may have been slightly windy, which would have helped). So the air flow reverses itself and that must have added more air to the smoldering wood, enough so that it started smoking badly.
I grab the fan from the kitchen (the one we're still using to air out the rug, which got wet again) and I can hear the smoke alarm in the sunroom going off. I rush back to the living room and throw open the window and start sucking air out on high speed. From there, I open the stove and thick puffs comes out at me, but the fan starts pulling it up and out.
I throw in some crumpled newspaper and then light it. I have to get it hot so the air starts flowing up the chimney. It takes a few tries, but it finally starts going.
Now I'm back upstairs and throwing open my bedroom windows and putting the second fan in there to try and evacuate the smoke from upstairs.
After about 20 minutes, the air is better. I turn the fan in my bedroom around and create a flow from upstairs down and out by the stove.
The house gets cold.
Tine had closed the kids bedroom doors to keep it out. I check my daughter's room because she's at a sleep over and there's plenty of smoke. I open her windows (and left them that way all night). In TheBoy's room, it's better, but not good. Open his windows for awhile. He doesn't wake up.
I leave the fans running for about another 30 minutes. My bedroom gets *cold*. Tine has the blankets over her head and pillows stacked to divert the blast.
I turn the fan off and close the windows. I go around and close all the other windows. Then I go downstairs and close up as well as stack the fire. It's now going fairly well. I throw some smaller, drier wood onto it and get it cranking.
I lay down on the couch and wait a bit. It's almost 5 AM now. I turn the stove down a bit, but keep it open enough for the wood to really burn.
I pass out on the couch.
Around 7:30 I feel TheBoy climbing on top of me. He's turned the TV on and is sitting on my back. He thinks it's funny. I don't care at this point and actually fall back asleep for 10 or 15 minutes.
Tine arrives and shuffles me off to bed. I wake up around 10:30 and I'm hung over all day Sunday with a nasty headache just dying to break into migraine status and the smell of smoke that I'm sure it jammed into my sinus.
posted by Evil Wayne @ 1:30 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home