You know this rural neighbor – the elderly widow who lives alone at the dead end of a road bypassed by the information superhighway. She doesn’t see Facebook, so doesn’t see public service reminders to keep furnace exhaust vents clear during a blizzard. And the specific scenario of blocked vents hasn’t come up in conversations with family members trying to get her to move.
Whether she doesn’t know or can’t physically manage to keep vents clear doesn’t really matter. What matters is that when snow accumulates or something blocks a furnace vent, the furnace kicks off. That’s what modern furnaces do when they detect a dangerous accumulation of the byproducts of combustion. Problem solved – except now there’s no heat.
If you’re holding your breath in fear that this scenario resulted in a tragic death in my neighborhood, you can stop. Thank goodness for the miracle of a working landline phone, and for rural fire department volunteers. The point here is to say that understanding how a house’s vents work is important so you can keep them clear or, better still, prevent blockages. That applies to people of all ages. But we really need to have The Vent Talk with rural elders trying to age in place. And this is the time of year when loved ones might be best able to help with prevention projects
Take a breath. In the next minute, you will probably take between 12 and 20 breaths. Thanks to your autonomic nervous system, most of the time we are hardly even aware that we’re taking in oxygen and eliminating carbon dioxide. You may hold your breath while passing a liquid manure tanker on a rural road. But our bodies soon override the impulse to not breathe – no matter how stinky or smoky or dusty or pollen-laden country air can be.
Our homes have similarish systems for bringing in fresh air and eliminating… Let’s call it stale air. These systems are not unique to rural homes, and dysfunction is not just a winter concern. However…
The pizza parable. Help is just closer in urban and suburban settings, and you won’t convince me otherwise: I once arrived in St. Paul after a harrowing drive in blizzard conditions and my host ordered pizza delivery. Sixteen inches of snow – and yet pizza came to her door. Out here, that’s not going to happen. It’s not that neighbors won’t help. It’s that when a small population is faced with a big challenge, it takes longer to cover the distance. And it doesn’t have to be snow that keeps help from coming. It might be roads blocked by trees, washouts, landslides, downed power lines. It might even be that most of the neighbors are also old, with health and mobility challenges of their own. Those are the realities of living in the country.
So we kind of have to understand how things work and take prudent measures to keep them working as much as possible – with contingency plans for when those measures fail.
Meet your vents. Vents connected to furnaces, water heaters, boilers and other household appliances need a clear path by which they can expel gasses like carbon monoxide (CO) from your living space. CO is odorless and colorless, so our bodies don’t immediately detect it as a source of potential danger. But CO can cause health impacts that are serious, cumulative, and sometimes fatal.
So it’s important to become familiar with where vents are located and what they’re connected to. It’s equally important to be tuned in to how a heating system or appliance sounds and behaves under normal operation, and alert for unusual sounds, decreased efficiency, unexpected shut-downs, and other signs that things are not as they should be.
Map those vents. This may sound silly, but probably isn’t. Spend some time in old farmhouses and you’ll see lots of scenarios that don’t match expectations. And plenty that do. Here’s one: Well-meaning adult children live hours away from stubborn elderly parents who now find heating with wood more challenging. So the family has an HVAC installer put in a furnace. The installer might explain the system to the homeowner. But the digital thermostat takes up most of the available mental bandwidth from someone used to adjusting the damper on a wood stove. Vents? Aren’t they supposed to just work on their own?
I recently mapped the vents on our house to put in our “next of kin” files. There’s no reason our loved ones would know we used to use a gas water heater to supply heat to the hydronic baseboard registers. Those vents on the back of the house were disconnected when we replaced the tank with an on-demand water heater, which vents on the front of the house. Also on the front are intake and exhaust vents for an air to air heat exchange unit and the range hood. The bathroom exhaust fan vents to the roof then down and out at the eave. And there’s an exhaust vent for a dryer, if we had one instead of using a clothesline. If health or mobility concerns force us to buy a dryer someday, the vent is there.
Identity concerns. Concerns certainly include things like vents that might be blocked by blowing and drifting snow. But that’s not all. For example, someone who wouldn’t leave a car idling inside an attached garage might inadvertently leave one running near an HVAC intake vent if they don’t realize it’s there. If that’s where it makes the most sense to park while getting a mobility-challenged elder in and out of a vehicle, turn the engine off.
Wind can have unexpected impacts on airflow. Our fire department responded to one carbon monoxide call where the placement of a standby generator seemed appropriate. But while it was running the wind carried exhaust up to a gable vent, through the attic and into the house. This is why working CO monitors are an absolute must (more on this below).
Mitigate potential problems. On the whole, it’s easier to prevent a problem before it becomes one. This starts with regular inspections and maintenance. Like pulling weeds near vents (will bindweed never die?). The louver grill on the air exchanger intake vent is cracked this spring, so I will replace it and the grill on the exhaust vent and the screens on both.
I’m also looking for vent guard ideas for the PVC intake and exhaust vents for our water heater. Strategic landscaping isn’t an option: Plants placed where they might diminish drifting but not block airflow would, I think, be killed under the snow avalanche that comes off our metal roof. We plan to build a set of hinged A-frame shields to put in place when we expect heavy snow and drifting. That should buy us some time. But in a few years, we might need something that’s more permanent.
Contingency plan. Most of the time, those water heater vents operate just as they should. In March, though, we had one of those late-winter blizzards that dumps a lot of snow in a short period and blows it around in patterns we don’t often see. The weather forecast was concerning, so Bill jerryrigged a shield for the vents.
It held through the first wave of the storm but eventually blew down. By some miracle, we had not lost power and our heat system was still operating. But the wind was still fierce, and we were afraid the vents would not stay clear. So before we went to bed that night, we shut off the water heater/heat system so if it became blocked it wouldn’t pose a danger. In the morning it was just under 60 degrees in the house. We lit a fire in the wood stove that is our backup heat source (extended power outages are common here). That took off the chill until we could get outside to clear vents again.
Looking out for each other. A friend who lives alone is good about checking in with us and letting us check on her. During the first lull in that March blizzard, she texted that she was going outside to check her vents then texted when she was safely back inside. That slog inspired her to consider other options. And by taking out screens, she could hang out her windows to check vents and clear them, if needed, with a broom. Without going outside.
When our loved ones think we should move to town, I think we’re going to be a handful!
Donna Kallner writes from Langlade County in rural northern Wisconsin. She reminds us all to have CO monitors installed near bedrooms and on every floor of a home, to test them monthly, replace batteries regularly, and replace units every five to seven years.
Carbon monoxide poisoning can present as flu-like symptoms (without fever), headache, dizziness, nausea, shortness of breath, confusion and fatigue. If you experience symptoms that could be from CO poisoning, immediately get everyone out of the house and into fresh air. Then call 911. Your fire department has the equipment and training to check the CO level.
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