adua1972

I need help. I have an oil burner in my basement for our heating system, and a couple of hours ago I opened the basement door to go do laundry and the whole basement smelled like oil. I called my fiance down, and he told me to go turn the heat up and when I did, the heat kicked on and a puff of smoke came out. I worry about carbon monoxide with our kids in the house, so I called the emergency service, and the technician explained to me that I probably need a new transmitter. He said he will be by tomorrow. I expressed my concerns about CO and he said that there would be smoke and soot all over. Is this true. I cracked a window open in my kids rooms because I am paranoid. Do you think we will be ok until he comes and checks it out?

likesacookie

Has he come out to fix it yet? Do you have a CO detector? That should let you know if there's a problem right off the bat. If it doesn't go off, you're probably going to be fine.
I don't know about the soot and smoke and such. I'm far from mechanically inclined. I did have a CO leak in my car and I never smelled exhaust, fwiw. My initial symptom when that happened was a headache at the base of my neck. Like, I kept rubbing my neck to relieve the pain. Then my vision went black. It happened so suddenly. I think with CO you either have a problem and find out about it quickly, or you don't have a problem. Either way, there's no harm in leaving the windows cracked.