Every fall, I think about the same thing: somewhere in our river towns, a furnace, boiler or water heater is about to fire up for the first time in months, and nobody has checked it.
I’ve spent my life around combustion appliances. I started in the HVAC trade at fourteen, and after school I went to work for an oil company testing combustion efficiency. In 1986, I started Clover Heating & Cooling and made indoor air quality my focus. Part of the reason is personal: I grew up an allergic kid, diagnosed with asthma early and treated by an allergist for years.
Later, at a seminar on carbon monoxide, I learned how serious and how invisible this problem really is. It changed how I think about my job.
A name most people remember
In September 1994, tennis star Vitas Gerulaitis was staying in a poolside cottage on a friend’s Long Island estate. A faulty, poorly vented heater beneath the cottage let carbon monoxide build up while he slept. He never woke up. He was 40 years old.
That’s exactly why CO is called the silent killer: no color, no odor, no warning.
I heard the same lesson closer to home from my teacher at the National Comfort Institute, Jim Davis, who passed away last year. Jim told the story of a routine test call where his readings turned up a dangerously high CO level, the kind that would have gone unnoticed without someone actually testing for it. Testing, not guessing, has to be the standard.
The quieter danger
The dramatic cases make headlines, but the more common danger is the slow leak. Low-level CO exposure causes headaches, fatigue, nausea and flu-like symptoms that come and go. A trip to the doctor means time in fresh air, so blood CO levels can drop before a test catches it. People get sent home with the wrong diagnosis and go right back into the same exposure.
A neurologist I met in Port Chester described exactly this. He was seeing a husband and wife separately, each with vague flu-like symptoms. Only when he noticed they shared the same address did the answer click: the illness was in their home, not in them. Once they were out of the house, their symptoms cleared up.
Why fall matters
Furnaces, boilers, water heaters and other gas or oil appliances sit unused all summer. Vents get blocked, connections corrode, and problems that develop quietly over months often show up the first day the heat comes on. That’s when a poorly performing appliance starts spilling combustion gases into the house instead of venting them outside.
That’s why fall, before the heating season starts, is the best time to have a qualified technician test your combustion appliances.
Three things every family can do
- Get an annual combustion safety test. A qualified technician can measure how safely your appliance is burning fuel, before a small problem becomes a dangerous one.
- Install carbon monoxide alarms. Treat them like smoke detectors, and change the batteries when you change your clocks.
- Know the symptoms. Headaches, fatigue or nausea that improve when you leave the house and return when you come home are worth mentioning to your doctor, and worth having your home tested.
What we do at Clover
Every fall tune-up we perform includes a combustion safety test on the home’s fuel-burning appliances, not just a filter change. We also offer an AirAdvice assessment, an on-the-spot indoor air quality report covering temperature, humidity, VOCs, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and particulates, so families can see what’s actually in the air they breathe.
None of this is complicated or expensive. It just has to get done, and fall is the time to do it.
Call Clover Heating & Cooling at 914-631-6744 or visit clovercool.com to schedule your fall combustion safety test. Clover Heating & Cooling, 225 North Broadway, Sleepy Hollow, NY.
Anthony Marmo is the founder of Clover Heating & Cooling
