Our house is 14 years old. This morning, we all woke up feeling dizzy and lightheaded. The kids and adults ate different food last night, and we all feel like this.
So I'm paranoid. I'm going to go get a new CO detector.
Thay dont have to alarm to get sick, get one with digital read out and memory button, It should read zero or you have issues, they dont alarm till a certain amount is reached for a period of time, just check the peak level every day, if it goes to even 20 I would start looking.
Came home with a new detector. No alrams. But I'm curious, what are sources of CO in a home?
go to google. search for "residential carbon monoxide sources"
When they first came out at least one brand incorporated the "sensor" with the battery. The sensor has somekind of "artificial" blood with respospnded to the CO in much the same manner as human blood.
In any house with gas appliance you should have one or two CO detectors with one being a "digital readout" type. These will show very small amounts of CO such as what happens when you burn something in the stove. The response to small levels gives you confidence that it will sound the alarm if the need arises.
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You have to let it operate 24 hours, a animal in a chimney, bad flue pipes, bad furnace, defective heating cause it.
Anything that has an internal combustion engine, gas appliances, or anything that burns. There is a small amount of CO present in the air and it is in equilibrium with carbon dioxide. Pouring water on hot coals will produce a lot of CO.
I know the gas company will come out if you smell gas, but will they come out and check for CO if we all feel sick?
My dizzyness has turned to nausea.
I'm going to call the gas company and see if they will come out with an instrument. Not sure if they will (or if they will for FREE), but it's worth a call.
I would suggest that six years is likely the max I would trust.
What I do is keep the new one in the second floor hall outside my bedroom and the older one on the first floor. I buy a new on a bout every four or five years. Same with smoke alarms.
You're not entirely correct. A CO detector with a digital display is preferable for tracking intermittent sources and general peace of mind. It is not true however that a detector is not going to alert for a CO reading slightly under a threshold. CO detectors use a time weighted alarm model and will alarm very fast for really high levels and with more of a delay for lower levels. The threshold where they really won't alarm at all is very low. The paperwork that comes with the detectors generally lists the threshold levels and times, or you can find it on the manufacturers sites.
Also if you have gas, you should consider the dual CO/GAS alarms that are available for not much more, since gas is it's own hazard without necessarily having CO present. Also note for these combo alarms the mounting location needs to vary depending on whether you have nat. gas or LP gas since nat. gas rises and LP gas sinks.
I don't know of any that have anything near 14 year sensor lives. I think 3-4 years is typical for sensor life. All the newer CO detectors have self test modes and sensor life monitors to alert you when the sensor has reached the end of it's life.
Good guess! The following is from the FirstAlert website:
Current UL Standard 2034 limits for CO alarms to sound are: =95 30ppm for 30 days =95 150ppm for 10-50 minutes =95 70ppm for 60-240 minutes =95 400ppm for 4-15 minutes
Any alarm that meets the UL standard needs to alarm at the above cumulative levels.
As far as checking things out, I would think the Fire Department would respond to a call to check for CO.
Jerry
Oh my God.
I called the fire department's non-emergency number, because someone told me they will do a carbon monoxide check as a public service.
They sent a fire truck and three ambulances to our house with full sirens and lights! It was a freak show. I felt like such an idiot!
What did they find? How is everyone feeling? A whole family with complaints of being dizzy and light headed is not something to ignore. What was the food? Did you call a doc?
I know of two families who had CO poisoning but not very ill. The first, a bad furnace. The second, a fireplace pulling exhaust from gas appliances into the home. When the first family had their furnace checked, the CO level was so high the guy wouldn't let them go back in the house. They had had headaches and mild nausea. I had been in their home, with my family, and my eyes burned like someone put acid in them, but rest of my family had no symptoms. I felt the burning in my eyes as soon as I went into the house, and my family was there longer than I. I mentioned it to the head of the maintenance dept. where I work, and he is the one who clued us as to the CO problem.
No CO anywhere. They said we were right to suspect it, and that "Full Response" is just the standard way they operate.
But my poor mother-in-law was down the street and she freaked. She came running to the house crying. The last time we had an emergency, my wife had had a brain aneurysm.
Hope you didn't screw up already. Did you buy one with the digital display or not?
Lets say the threshold limit is 400 parts per million, or whatever it is for CO.
Lets say you have a concentration of 389ppm. It's not going to alert. But wouldn't you want to know if there was ANY CO around so you could find the source before it got to bad levels. That's the problems with most of those detectors. They usually go off after you're passed out. Even the properly working ones with digital readouts will give you readings from traffic, a car entering or leaving your garage, a wood stove that's perfectly vented, and other things. But you do want to know what the level is before it reaches the critical stage.
Steve
On 4/28/2008 12:58 PM Mitch@_._ spake thus:
That sure sounds like CO poisoning to me. (Don't ask me how I know that.)
If you are nauseous and suspect CO, I would not spend another night in the house.
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