So when we bought the apartment, there were certain issues that we knew about, because they came up in the inspection. We knew, for example, that the furnace was on its last legs. It is original to the building, meaning fifty years old, and was converted from oil to gas. The inspector looked at it and said that while the furnace might be okay for a while, possibly even a few more years, it was certainly inefficient and potentially unsafe, although it would take a furnace guy to know for sure. Since Furnace Guys are expensive, and we knew that the furnace had to be replaced at some point anyway, we decided to go ahead and get a new furnace. I talked to Monte, the Fixer of All Things and himself a former Furnace Guy, who told me what questions to ask; I then called the Trane people, one of whom came out and gave us an estimate for a new, high-efficiency furnace, and a water heater too, since the old one was leaking and probably not worth fixing. Monte agreed with the Trane man that a humidifier was a good idea as well, so we also went with that. Total bill: $4,500.

So on Monday, the day we officially took possession, two more Furnace Guys showed up at 8:45 am. I let them into the empty apartment and went to work, while MHH stayed, doing some cleaning and waiting for the locksmith. I stopped by with Barak in the afternoon, on my way home from work. It was hot out, so we had the windows closed to hold in the AC, which was, of course, turned off while the system was being worked on.

And standing in the living room, I started feeling very strange. My chest felt heavy. There was a sense of pressure in the air. I couldn't push back the fear, which was rapidly moving toward panic. Could it be over the decision to buy the house? Was there something wrong with the place I hadn't known about--radon, mold, poltergeists? Whatever it was, I didn't like it. At all. I opened up all the windows, and went outside, and let Barak play in the yard. Almost immediately, I was breathing more easily, and we went back home.

A couple hours later, I came back and signed the work order from the Furnace Guys. "That was a big job," one of them said. "But it's a good thing you didn't wait. That was one hazardous furnace. It's been pumping carbon monoxide right into the apartment." He told me that the flue pipe was rusted out, and as the hole grew, the amount of carbon monoxide that did not get exhausted grew as well. And it continued to seep into the basement and get blown upstairs, along with the warm air--every time the heat was on, more and more every day.

Blown upstairs into the apartment that, until last week, was inhabited by a young family with a six-month-old baby--and a carbon monoxide detector with no battery.