I just saw a story on the news about a young family that was killed by carbon monoxide poisoning.

Two years ago, our carbon monoxide detector went off. When our local gas company came to check it out, they found the reading from our burner to be 9,999. They told us it was surely much higher, but their equipment only had a 4 digit readout. They turned off the gas to our house and we had to open all the windows (and had to replace the burner and hot water heater). My daughter had fainted earlier in the day. The gas company told us that she was surely showing the first signs of poisoning. He also delivered the very frightening news that if we had gone to bed that night without addressing the problem, we would probably have been killed in our sleep.

As winter sets in, please make sure that you have a functioning carbon monoxide detector.