My family didn’t have a lot when I was growing up, but I didn’t know any different.

We lived in an old farmhouse that was built in the 1940s and it had been occupied on and off since then.

That house was extremely drafty and we had a chronic problem with squirrels finding their way into the attic, especially in the cold winter season when they’re looking for a warm place to sleep. My mom yelled at my dad countless times for not trying to patch the holes being created by the squirrels each time they broke into the house. Although I guess in my father’s defense, they probably would have created new holes with each successive attempt to patch the previous one. But one thing my father definitely couldn’t do on his own was maintaining and servicing the chimney. The house had a propane powered gas furnace, but we also burned wood in a wood stove as a supplemental heat source during the cold northern winters. With wood burning, the chimney needs to be cleaned at least once a year. The house actually possessed a fireplace in the basement, but it needed a new chimney as the previous owners had been burning garbage in it and the soot was toxic. I didn’t know that homes with multiple fireplaces have a separate chimney chute for each one, even if they’re parallel with each other vertically. We had a service contract with a chimney sweeping company and paid a discounted rate to have him come out twice a year to clean the soot off the sides of our chimney stack. It made a huge difference with wood stove performance.
air purification