Carbon Monoxide Lies,Damn Lies, and Corgi Wives tales

[Andrew]

While Googling for ECO Hometec references I came across the site of a Scottish Corgi Co. using the web url

with some interesting (and to my mind contradictory advise about CO).

I particularly like the comparison between CO and Natural gas, and the claim that CO has an odour :-

WHAT IS CO ? - THE FACTS !! CO is not Well Understood: Misconceptions: Properties, Presence & Detection:

CO is easy to detect.

CO is lighter than air and therefore rises (to the ceiling) and stays there.

CO is not combustible.

CO and natural gas are the same thing.

You can always tell if CO is present because of a peculiar odour that will be present.

A brand new, well designed, perfectly "tuned" heating/cooking device cannot produce toxic/lethal amounts of CO.

Diesel engine exhaust never contains adequate CO to cause harm.

HVAC and gas company personnel always check for CO when performing maintenance/service on home heating systems.

CO will be detected immediately by service personnel if it is present in a home heating system.

When your home CO detector shows low levels of CO, it is probably just an instrument malfunction.

Cracks in heat exchangers are responsible for production of CO.

Home CO detectors/sensors are the best devices to ferret out CO because they react to very low levels of the gas.

[Andy Hall]

Read it again. That's in the Misconceptions list, along with the rest that you pasted here.

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

[Andy Hall]

Ed, it's all *meant* to be wrong - it's in a misconceptions section on the site.

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

[Xenon]

Mmm I don't think I would let you do any gas installations for me.

[Andrew]

In article , Andy Hall writes

Oops, sorry, must be suffering from 'erratic behaviour' - one of the alleged symptoms. The wife of the 1st owner of my house apparently committed suicide and I have been looking for some hard scientific evidence that low-level CO poisoning might have been a contributory factor. There was a really bad precast flue in this house (1976 semi) and only last year I discovered the extent of the problem and ripped the whole lot out. When the wind is in a particular direction I am sure I can still detect a faint smell of combustion products when I come into the house - but I don't have any gas appliances at the moment !.

When I lived further down the estate (1978 built house) BG sent letters to everyone saying that needed to seal the ceiling *inside* the false chimney breast housing the back boiler, but I never found out why. I have been in present house since 1991 and have mentioned the bad smells in the bedroom above the boiler to BG 3* engineers many times, but the smoke test was always OK. If they had measured CO in the floor void or inside cavity it would have been obvious but this was never done.

Interestingly enough, I think I have had an excessive amount of headaches, sniffles, aches and pains since 1991 but had attributed to it to sick-building syndrome where I work.

[Andrew]

In article , Xenon writes

That's unlikely - see rest of thread.

[Andy Hall]

It's not exactly a well constructed site, is it? :-)

Coming from next door?

I think I would talk to the neighbour and agree together to jointly pay for somebody to come and do a proper test for CO etc.

If there is something and it's entering your house the chances are that it will his as well....

There's any number of reasons for that. I'd talk to the doctor and ask for a blood test to be done with a full range of analyses on anything that could possibly be related. A great deal can be gleaned from a comprehensive set of blood tests.

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

[a]

I know CO has no odour in itself, but I could certainly sense a different smell from our boiler last time it was all sooted up (and so probably producing high amounts of CO). I dont know what I was smelling, but it had a calor gas fire type smell to it which disappeared immediately after the boiler was serviced?

[Mary Fisher]

That sounds more like the odour of incomplete combustion - which is more than CO.

Mary