bought co detector, now where to put it?

[HeatMan]

Best place to put it would be back on the shelf at the store.

For what it's worth, that Nighthawk won't alarm or even go off until CO has reached danger levels. As I recall, they won't alarm until CO reaches 50PPM for an eight hour period. That's not good enough for me, but it's good enough to satisfy UL2034.

The card sitting in front of me tell me that (supposedly) 9PPM is acceptable in a living space. 50PPM is the max concentration over an 8 hour period.

400PPM will give you frontal headaches in 1 to 2 hours and life threatening after 3 hours. 800PPM will cause nausea and convulsions, death within 2 hours, etc, etc.

A lot of people don't like the low level alarms, but that's what I recommend to customers. Your money is better spent on having your heating system checked on an annual basis.

You can read more about this at

Here's an interesting post on a BB I read. Flame away.

[George E. Cawthon]

very lucky. Check out the statistics on CO poisoning in homes compared to other death causes. Way more chance of dying in a car accident on the way to work, even if you wear a seat belt. Diligence in gas appliance maintenance stops the small possibility of CO poisoning far better than a CO meter.

It's worth

[George E. Cawthon]

Your statement of effect is essentially the same as in my Nighthawk book. The book also says that the minimum for an alarm is 70ppm within 60 to 240 minutes. The display won't show anything below

29ppm unless you press the peak level button and then it will show 11 to 29ppm. In English that means it can't detect anything under 11 ppm.

That's good enough for me. Hell a model that wouldn't detect 500ppm would be ok if just seeing satisfied my wife. Diligent maintenance of gas appliance is far more important that having a CO detector. Mine hasn't gone off (except for a low battery alarm) in 4 years and I don't expect that it will ever go off before the detector fails. I'll just keep watching my furnace and water heater for any changes in operation--noise, visual, etc.

[mm]

My brother wanted me to buy one, and actually mentioned it twice, which for him is a lot.

So I did. The instructions with this first A;lert, I think it was, said it didn't matter too much how high the detector was, but that was

10 years ago. Maybe they've changed their minds.

I put in the outlet about 12 inches above the floor and 8 feet to the left of my bed, which had an outlet not being used. 2 or 3 months after I put it in, it went off at 3 in the morning, woke me up, and I am alive to type today, although some of you may have notice that my mental function is not as good as it should be.

:)

I opened the window, ran down stairs to turn off the furnace. Then I went up stairs where I got quickly colder. After 60 or 90 minutes I closed the window, but I didn't turn the heat on. When the furnace was checked the 8 or 12 inch flue only had about 2 inches diameter for exhaust. The rest was soot.

At the time, some insturctions didn't mention oil furnaces as a problem, iiac.

I called them with a couple questions and one thing they said not to do was to test the detector by finding some CO and stuffing the detector into it. I got the impression too high a concentration would ruin that model.

[mm]

Yes, and you can tell if most of it is working or not.

They do have some sort of test device that releases CO when opened. they're only the size of 4 nickles, or maybe 2 quarters, and I haven't seen them retail iirc.

[HeatMan]

Okay. Most of what I said was from memory, at least I was close.

That's not a good way to check your system(s). Get a trained HVAC expert to go over your system with a recently calibrated CO detector. I use a Bacarach Fyrite Pro 125.

[HeatMan]

I have seen the testers you mention somewhere. The kits comes with a heavy duty zipper lock plastic bag and a capsule with concentrated CO gas in it, along with explicit instructions not to test inside a building.

[HeatMan]

As I recall, the specific gravity of CO is right at .97 with the air we breathe at a 1.0. Based on that information, even though it's lighter than air, it's not going up or down fast.

[ap]

Thanks. That is quite a thread! I have mine set on a table near the bedrooms and so far it's showing a zero reading. The package came with 3 AAA energizer batteries and indicates that it will start chirping when the battery goes low.

How long have the batteries lasted for you folks ?

Thanks!