vs1988

Hey

I'm 16 years old. For the past couple of days I have been feeling very tired, short of breath, muscle ache, and lightheaded. The symptoms were worse this morning, but they seemed to ease while I was in school. After coming home, I opened all the windows in my room and let it air out, and I continued to feel better. After closing the windows, my symptoms slowly came back. My mom and dad both say they've been feeling tired and dizzy as well, but my brother and sister seem fine.

I talked to a friend of mine who is a firefighter today, and he strongly recommended I called the FD to have them come and meter the house to check for a CO leak. I suggested this to my mom, and she said no. She said I was just being paranoid and that its probably just a virus going around. The weird thing is, she almost passed out yesterday, and felt ill today, and she is the one who stays home all day, while my siblings, my dad, and myself all are out for the majority of the day (school, work etc.).

Our furnace room always smells very sooty and oily, and our system is pretty old, though we do have it serviced every year. There is also an erroded hole in the exhaust chimney about the size of a penny.

I bought a CO detector for my room, and I'm thinking of putting it in the room adjacent to the furnace room, so if it is a leak it'll be picked up faster.

As far as my mom goes, she will not allow me to call the FD and have them check it out, even though its a free service. She is convinced that I am just paranoid.

My dad is agreeing with her, but he is repairing the hole in the exhaust chimney tonight with duct tape and aluminum.

What should I do? It gets pretty cold at night so I can't sleep with the windows open, and my mom will not even hear about letting the FD do a workup. What can I do to protect myself? Does CO get flushed from your body gradually daily, or does it stay and build up?

Thank you

VS