Medley Heating and Air Conditiong, Indoor Air Quality Experts

Hey guys, Texas from Medley Heating and Air here. I think we finally made it past the most brutal part of summer and I think everyone can agree that it's gonna be a nice change of pace to to not bake when you step outside for more than five minutes. We're starting to transition now more into wintertime, fall and wintertime, and doing less air conditioning repairs and service and more heating repairs and service and maintenance of course. I've got a furnace here that we removed from a home yesterday that when the technician was on-site he actually noticed that had a pretty significant failure that can have that could be a pretty dangerous situation if it weren't caught. I've got this furnace here I'm gonna go over a little bit about what's taking place and why it's so dangerous. This is a gas-powered furnace, natural gas-powered furnace, and this here is called the heat exchanger. So what happens is when the gas kicks on you're gonna get a flame and that flame is going to shoot in to some burners that you can't see on this one but those burns are gonna heat up this heat exchanger and then you're gonna have a flue pipe. I don't have one here to show you but you're gonna have a flue pipe and an exhaust that actually pulls all that heat up and out of the house or excuse me all those uh by products of the flame up and out of the house. All the combustion gases, carbon monoxide and things like that that you don't want to breathe. So what happens is these heat exchangers they get brittle and they can fail over time. This one here actually did. If you look right, get this clear, if you look right there there's a crack actually a hole in this one and I think you can see another one on this side. Now the reason that's so dangerous is because all of, man I'm terrible with a camera, sorry, all those gases that are intended to be exhausted out of the house are now being introduced into the airstream because of that crack in the heat exchanger. So instead of everything being pulled out and sent through the flue pipe and exhausted outside where it doesn't matter, the blower is actually blowing those into the home and that can create a really dangerous situation if it's not caught. So a couple things that I recommend doing every year to hopefully prevent any kind of carbon monoxide poisoning is first and foremost have your heaters inspected especially if they're older. Not that it can't happen on a newer unit but it's a lot less likely. But on these old, if you have a furnace that's over 10 years old, get it looked at. It's such an easy thing to catch and can really prevent a dangerous situation in your home. Also get and install carbon monoxide detectors if you don't have them already and if you do have them, check them. Make sure the batteries are good. If it's a battery-powered operated one, most of them will have a little button on it that you can push in and test it. I think the expected life on them is eight to ten years. I know that most of them have an expiration date on the back side of them if you just pull it off and look but it's just something so easy. It's inexpensive to get carbon monoxide detectors and it's such a huge safety risk to not get your heaters looked at especially in a situation like this one. This gentleman's furnace here was I think from the early 80s so it was pretty extreme. I feel a real sense of passion to share this information with people because something like this could really be devastating to a family to lose a loved one over something like this because that's a very real reality and even if you don't lose somebody, long-term exposure to carbon monoxide can have serious effects as well. Neurological effects and health effects, adverse health effects. So I just strongly recommend doing those things. Get carbon monoxide detectors put in your house or test them if you have them. Check the expiration date. Make sure that they're all in good working order and have your gas appliances, your furnace specifically inspected and maintained each year to make sure that yours doesn't end up looking like this one and if you'd like us to come out and take a look at that for you we'd be happy to but call whoever that you are whoever you have that relationship with and trust to look at these things because it is that big of a deal. I hope you guys have a wonderful weekend. We're going into Labor Day and I hope you all have a good great time with your family. Enjoy each other's company and stay safe out there.