Carbon Monoxide & Combustion Safety

It is important that you educate and protect yourself from carbon monoxide poisoning. CO has no color, no odor and no taste, and its early symptoms — headache, fatigue, nausea — look like a hundred ordinary things. Any home with a gas furnace, water heater, fireplace or attached garage should take it seriously.

Beebe performs combustion analysis as part of heating service: we measure what is actually coming out of the appliance rather than guessing from how the flame looks. We inspect heat exchangers for cracks, verify draft and venting, check for flue blockages and backdrafting, and confirm the appliance is getting the combustion air it needs.

Tight modern homes make this more important, not less. Bath fans, range hoods and dryers can pull enough air out of a sealed house to reverse the draft on a natural-draft appliance and pull exhaust gases back into the living space — a problem no single test on a single appliance will catch unless the technician is looking for it.

We also advise on CO alarm placement and the limits of store-bought detectors, most of which are designed to alarm at levels well above what causes chronic low-level symptoms. Knowing what your detector will and will not tell you is part of protecting your household.

If you smell gas, feel symptoms that improve when you leave the house, or have a detector sounding, leave the building and call the fire department first. Then call us at (913) 541-1222 — we run service 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.