We found a comfortable but old rental near my flower shop and my husband’s workplace.
It was a detached unit, and the landlord left us to manage all the maintenance, including the heating.
We didn’t get a chance to schedule that because the furnace kept breaking down, and we had a heating specialist coming over almost every month during winter. We handled the heating repair without question since the owner was not ready for a new HVAC installation, and we couldn’t afford to move away. There was always an HVAC professional in our house. When we started getting sick, we thought it had something to do with the problematic heating device. We asked the heating technician to check the entire cooling and heating equipment, but we always kept forgetting to check the fireplace because nobody used it. The heating company specialist told us he had to check it for water damage and possible mold, and we insisted that it wasn’t a problem because we weren’t using it anyway. The landlord had assured us that it had been well-maintained before we moved in. It turns out they painted over the wall, which had already started showing mold damage, and sealed off the fire point, which made it difficult to see the hidden toxins. The heating dealership expert was shocked and told us it was a violation we had to report because that mold had harmed us for the three months we had stayed there. I was so angry; given that I was pregnant, it felt like I needed a thermostat to regulate my temper. We moved immediately and pursued the landlord to pay our medication costs and damages. I’m never moving to a house with a chimney; an electric heater will be enough.