Haha "contractor's license" what is that? At the state level, some electricians are licensed. Carpenters, generals? No way. The county we're talking about doesn't even inspect private homes. (Which lack of inspection is a good thing. You can always hire an inspector. In the meantime, thrifty folks are building their own homes and only hiring out for the jobs they can't do themselves.) Besides this was probably thirty years ago. My friend is old. His employer (is he who you want to see licensed?) probably isn't even still alive now.
CO is dangerous, sure, but lots of fireplaces have had poor draws over the thousands of years that humans have been using fireplaces. It's more common to die from CO when the whole house is burning, but it isn't a sure thing even then. Lots of practices that used to be accepted are going away now that some buildings have CO detectors installed. I had to get the fire department involved to convince a tenant in my office building that their cleaning crew shouldn't use propane-powered floor buffers. The fire department guy was like "I wondered why we had a CO alarm in June..."
It's amusing to me that you're so sure my friend was lying about this amusing anecdote from his past. I've seen this guy get in an argument with an employer when he thought he had been overpaid.
GC licensing isn't some new regulation. It's been around for a lot longer than 30 years in most states. In Colorado, carpenters and other general contractor's are licensed at the municipal/county level, not the state level. All counties in Colorado require general contractors to be licensed except the most rural counties.
It's one thing to build a chimney that accidentally traps fumes. It's another to do so deliberately. This sort of stunt in CA would be (and 30 years ago, still would have been) a criminal act.
So yeah, I'm pretty sure your friend is either outright lying or exaggerating the truth to ridiculous extremes.
It's more common to die from CO when the whole house is burning, but it isn't a sure thing even then.
I have no idea where you got this statistic from, but the primary cause of death from fires is smoke inhalation, not CO inhalation. CO inhalation deaths are greatest in the winters when people run their fireplaces with the chimney flues closed or faulty internal heaters.
This may come as a surprise, but I live in a rural county, and the house we're talking about is in an even more rural county. It's curious, that on HN we Americans are always reminded not to assume anything about other cultures (and rightly so), but we're eager in turn to assume all sorts of things about other states we've never seen. You've got some strong emotions about how remodeling should be done and paid for, but not everyone feels the same as you do. Certainly not everyone felt that way decades before you even thought about construction. California (or whatever other state you're referencing) is not a microcosm of the rest of the nation.
Anyway, you're wrong about that state too. Lots of remodeling gets done there, too, without the involvement of licensed general contractors.
CO is dangerous, sure, but lots of fireplaces have had poor draws over the thousands of years that humans have been using fireplaces. It's more common to die from CO when the whole house is burning, but it isn't a sure thing even then. Lots of practices that used to be accepted are going away now that some buildings have CO detectors installed. I had to get the fire department involved to convince a tenant in my office building that their cleaning crew shouldn't use propane-powered floor buffers. The fire department guy was like "I wondered why we had a CO alarm in June..."
It's amusing to me that you're so sure my friend was lying about this amusing anecdote from his past. I've seen this guy get in an argument with an employer when he thought he had been overpaid.