A car consumes more like 1 gallon/hour idling.
Only in Hollywood. It's not a "big nod" like in the movies.
CO emissions from cars are typically near zero. The CO2 will displace air and suffocate you. But neither is particularly fast, and survival instincts are hard to countermand.
3 people died after the Charley storm in exactly this way, two separate incidents. The gennys were in the garage
My car consumes only about 2 gallons/hour driving 60 miles per hour (at roughly 30 miles per gallon), with the engine at about 2800 RPM under load. I would certainly expect it would do a lot better than 1 gallon per hour at
600 RPM with no load. Maybe you're driving a Ford Expedition.CO doesn't exactly suffocate you. You make it sound like you'd need there to be more CO than oxygen in order for it to kill you. According to this, you body will always use CO before oxygen when both are inhaled.
And yes - it can kill you very quickly.
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Comparing to a car is bogus anyway, unless you are talking about an early 60s car. Emission controls make most of the CO go away (Basically the A.I.R. pump) in a car but small engines like you see in generatpors have no emission controls. They are pretty dirty across the board. I have heard it said that lawn mowers, weed whackers ansd leaf blowers may contribute more to smog than cars these days. Outboards are already under scrutiny.
According to Jamie :
Very small amounts of CO can kill you quickly.
"Near zero" CO emissions from cars can kill you if you're not ventilating well enough. Starting a car in a closed garage and sitting in the car to read a book is about the easiest and gentlest ways to die there is.
There are no "survival instincts" triggered by CO. CO2 triggers a physiological reaction (you _know_ you're not getting enough to breathe, because that's part of the active feedback of how your breathing system works).
CO does not. It has no smell. You have no way of knowing it's happening _unless_ it's accompanied by something else (like smoke). If you're _expecting_ the smoke ("well, gosh darn it, there is a generator running in the bathroom!"), well...
Your blood stream simply starts carrying less and less oxygen and you fall asleep (if you aren't already). Then die.
More people died in the great ice storm from CO than any other cause.
Many of those were inadequately ventilated generators.
CO kills by preferentially binding to the haemoglobin in your red blood cells _instead_ of O2, but your cells aren't interested in using CO.
It binds tightly enough that you do not get rid of it very fast.
Which is why a short exposure to CO can lead to a long recovery on pure O2.
[In severe cases, they can resort to pure O2 in hyberbaric chambers. Above about 30PSI, you don't _need_ haemoglobin in your blood stream to carry enough O2 to stay alive long enough for the CO to eventually go away.]
You didn't follow what I said, CO vs CO2.
Bunk. The pCO2 respiratory stimulation will kick in long before integrated pCO is enough to affect anything. Car exhaust is nearly pure CO2 and steam, plus very tiny amounts of things like CO. As a suicide method, it's absolutely stupid, because the mostly likely outcome is a brain-damaged but still-alive subject.
The dose makes the poison. Your swell ideas about what happens given a lethal dose of CO doesn't mean inhaling car exhaust will administer a lethal dose. Citing unusual cases where it has happened is to commit the fallacy of selection.
Yes, a 1-cylinder B&S/Tecumseh/Kohler/etc is typically far worse than a modern auto engine as regards emissions.
I disagree. That philosophy leads to those user manuals that start with 10 pages of warnings that nobody reads. Rear-view mirrors that warn you about things appearing smaller. Caution should be proportioned to risk. Cf the boy who cried wolf. Probability, hazards, and risks are about the hardest intellectual concepts going; we ought not to be burdening people with any more than they need.
Heck, I'd do it one better, save my pennies and buy a bigger , louder unit that will get the point across.. just like SUV owners
You can make a generator "bunker" with sandbags around the generator to absorb and deflect sound away.
A larger muffler as mentioned previously would most likely help to reduce exhaust noise, some type of enclosure could reduce the mechanical noise.
I agree with your sentiment. But I think it is irresponsible to (basically) tell people that it's OK to run your car in the garage with the door shut because the emissions are virtually zero. Did you read the link I posted earlier, which contained a very revealing analysis of the amount of CO produced by a car started in an enclosed garage? It does not support your position that this is a negligible risk.
Jamie, you have to remember that Richard comes from a planet where it's safe to drink gasoline, but borax is a deadly poison. Just Google some of his previous posts in this ng and you'll see.
Enclosures can be built but need to be designed right and need more than a few inches of airspace. The heat from the motor and exuast will ignite wood. I use an 8x8 shed with some insulation at the roof and leave the doors open and run a fan inside. Contacting a pro or the mnfg is best. Mufflers will work but will reduce power.
Sure Honda is the best but at 2.5-3x the price. But you do get what you pay for, in voltage stability, reliability and quietness.
I ran my 7500w gen ten ft outside my house, my Co alarm tripped as the wind was blowing fumes back in. Running it in an attached space is high risk even with doors open. Best is a sepatate shed- garage with 20 -30+ ft proper cable. Generators are inneficent engines and can at full load consume the same
15 hp it takes to power a small car at 55mph. Also most homeowner gens run at a less efficient 3600 rpm rather than a cars, apx 1800 at 55 mph.
It would be irresponsible to twist my words to that effect.
I explained how both are hazardous but by different routes, and not so hazardous by others. A mocking response to this rather simple concept betrays a childish habit of mind.
[Okay, I won't quote the only suicide that I'm personally aware of.]
Bunk still.
You're missing a critical difference between how CO2 and CO affects the body.
CO2 _primarily_ works by simple displacement of O2, and at high enough levels suppression of breathing (at mid levels it encourages breathing, at very high levels it suppresses it).
If you remove someone from a CO2 situation short of brain damage occuring, they recover pretty instantly.
In other words, CO2 in == CO2 out (more or less). The body is designed to expell CO2. In contrast, CO inhibits O2 transfer no matter how much O2 is in your lungs. Not only that, it's expelled very slowly. It "bioaccumulates" at any exposure level above a very low threshold. Once you've been CO-poisoned, you have to have breathing support (ie: pure O2 or hyperbaric) long enough for your body to have a chance to get rid of the CO.
Thus, in anything short of a perfectly sealed environment, it's VERY common for the CO2 levels to never reach hazardous levels and being able to survive it indefinately, but the CO level in the blood starts to rise.
Thus, operating a gas generator for a long period of time (hours) when there's the slightest exhaust leak to living areas is _extremely_ hazardous. Because the CO2 concentration (and smell) may never get strong enough to do something about. But the CO level in your blood is going up and up and ... even tho you're getting plenty of O2, your blood doesn't want it. You die without even noticing, because you're breathing acceptable levels of CO2.
Take careful note of the MSDS's and descriptions of CO2 and CO poisoning.
Notice how "shortness of breath" is _not_ a symptom of CO poisoning? That's why it's so dangerous.
It is a fact that you once stated in this ng that the hydrocarbons in gasoline are safe to drink.
It is also a fact that you claimed that borax is a deadly poison.
It is likewise a fact that when I posted LD50 figures that showed otherwise, you claimed I was wrong, but never responded when challenged to provide the correct figures.
In this thread you have claimed that the levels of CO in automobile exhaust are not particularly harmful (I admit I'm paraphrasing, but I think I've captured the gist of it).
If anything, your statements seem to deserve much more mocking than they have received so far.
AMEN!
BB
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