Even scarier now that we've had time to examine the gas fireplace, which I think must have tried to kill us last night. I think we've narrowed the problem down to that piece of junk. (it will be leaving us soon)

I looked at the sides of the gas fireplace. It's a ventless one, so it eats room air to work, instead of sucking in it's own air from outside.

For some reason when it came on, either it was malfunctioning, or it's thermostat was set to almost flamethrower setting. I found scorch marks on the front of the fireplace tonight. There's also a sooty residue on the ceiling of the inside of the fireplace that was not there before.

I had noticed that it had huge flames in it last night, and my dad saw it too, and had come downstairs to turn off the gas feed to it before we all went outside last night. Which, I think saved the house. The flames never got all the way out of it.

I noticed last night, before the fireplace had gotten turned off, it was so hot in the upstairs. I think the heat from the fireplace had made it's way upstairs (since heat rises) and had the upstairs to a seriously warm level. I think if the fireplace hadnt gotten turned off before the FD got here, it could have gotten hot enough upstairs for things to get very bad.

I just thought of this, but when we had the heating guy here a couple of weeks ago to check our furnace, I asked him to turn the fireplace on and set the thermostat at a low setting. I remember him seeming to be a bit confused when he was turning on the pilot, so I'm going to check to see what he set the thermostat to on that thing.

~checking...~

HOLY CARPPY FISHSTICKS!!!

What part of "set it to Low" did this kid not understand????
When I had asked the kid who checked our furnace to turn on the pilot on the fireplace, I told him to set it as low as he could get it. The thermostat says "Low" on one end of the dial, the other end of the dial says "High".

Guess where the dial was set to?? Can ya guess??!?!??!

It was set nearly to "As High as you can get without starting to split atoms"!

Little putz nearly burned down the house. I trusted that he set it right, because, gosh...he's supposed to know how these things work, since he installs stuff like that all the time.

My dad is not the vindictive sort, so he's probably not going to say anything to the heating company. I just told him what the thermostat was set to, and I think he's now starting to freak. At least the smoke detectors caught it!