My husband and I have spent most of our lives up in the north. We soon grew tired of dealing with crazy amounts of snow and ridiculously low temperatures. It didn’t take much to decide to get a house down south to spend the winters there. We like to head out shortly after Christmas and stay until April. The house up north is an old one, so it doesn’t exactly have the conventional ductwork most people know of. Instead, there is a gas fireplace in the living room with a small, ventless heater in the kitchen. I love how reliable the fireplace is, on top of being safe and energy efficient. The ventless kitchen heater, on the other hand, needs a great deal of maintenance. The filter always needs to be cleaned or the heater will just never shut off. It will just keep blasting away, which causes a lot of worry for overheating. I am always afraid it will start a fire. When my husband and I leave for the winter, We always make sure that the fireplace is down on low and the kitchen heater is completely cut off. I still went ahead and asked my mom to watch over things in the house. All I needed her to do was walk around the house once a week to flush the toilets and water the plants. She took it upon herself to visit the house every day and running the kitchen heater for fear that the pipes are going to freeze up. I have asked her time and again not ro run the heater, also explaining the potential hazards. I even thought about disabling the heater so that she doesn’t do it anymore. She starts up the heater as soon as we leave, and I know she isn’t taking care of the filter properly.