“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…”