A word on CO2

[PrairieGhost]

I lost two good friends two years ago due to a malfunctioning furnace. I bought a co detector for my hunting tailer and need to get it in before I go hunting with it.

 

[Fishmission]

Do the newer fancy permanent fish houses have a CO monitor included?

 

[Captain Ahab]

The one thing I looked for when I purchased a fish house was the RVIA certification. Meaning it was certified as safe as a RV for sleeping. I also watched the prevailing wind and tried to make sure my exhaust side wasn't pushing directly against the wind. The CO detector would go off if I ran a gas auger in the house long enough so I know that worked as well. Nothing is completely fail safe when it comes to sleeping on the ice so one can never be too cautious with that stuff.

 

[shorthairsrus]

We use to use a open flame burner (the type you use for turkeys), kerosene heaters, wood --- i think about it all it amazing one has lung left - thank god i never was a smoker.

What almost got me one night was a lantern in the back of my topper. I was so cold --- i lit it and warmed up eyes closed and luckily i somehow woke by pure chance and i felt like i was almost dead.

 

[muzzyhunter]

In addition to furnaces,stove and atomospheric waterheaters are major sources of co,but any combustible appliance is going to give off co.My job deals with worst case draft testing and combustion analasis.When checking co in flue on most ovens it is not uncommon to see levels of a couple hundred ppm,of course this is air free,before mixing with outside air,but is still dumping considerable amounts of co into the home.When cooking large holiday meals or using oven for extended periods use ventilation.If you think back to holiday dinners,where mom or gramma were slaving over stove all day,only to get headache and become irrateable,possibly some co poisioning.
Atmospheric waterheaters are probably the easiest combustion appliance to backdraft,I see alot spilling under normal operation.Signs of spillage usually show at the draft hood,some type of corrosion,but not always.I use a manometer to check this,while heater running but can be done with a piece of cobweb,if cobweb is sucked in at draft hood you are drafting.Now to put into worst case,you would turn on all fans venting to the outside,including range hood and dryer,also running air handler on furnace,now in this situation may not be drafting and actually spilling co back into the home.
Sorry to ramble on but CO is a big part of my job,and anyone with combustible appliances should have meters to avoid these tagedies.

 

[espringers]

I gathered from the post that charcoal must be bad news. But, to be honest I had never thought about it before this thread. So, I don't consider it too obvious and think it can't be overstated in case someone didn't realize it was probably a major factor.

 

[Fritz the Cat]

Elliot's dad is an avid sportsman and instilled safety to his 3 sons. It can happen to the best of us. Don't drop your guard.

 

[Coyote Hunter]

I gathered from the post that charcoal must be bad news. But, to be honest I had never thought about it before this thread. So, I don't consider it too obvious and think it can't be overstated in case someone didn't realize it was probably a major factor.

I agree... I am not sure why a couple people had to hammer on sl1000794 for stating it.

 

[campchef]

Most of you are too young to remember or participate in the Hibachi craze of the 70s. Small little grills fired by charcoal that people would use in their kitchens for grilling. Lots of folks met their maker from the resulting fumes w/o adequate ventilation.

 

[scrotcaster]

maybe this is a dumb question but does carbon monoxide rise or sink?. Just wondering where the best placement for a CO detector would be in a house? ceiling or floor Thanks

 

[Captain Ahab]

maybe this is a dumb question but does carbon monoxide rise or sink?. Just wondering where the best placement for a CO detector would be in a house? ceiling or floor Thanks

The one in my fish house is about 2 feet from floor. A lot of the home detectors plug into an outlet. I believe it starts by pooling near the floor per previous conversations as well.

- - - Updated - - -

After a quick search it appears to be near the same density as air(3% lighter). Sounds like it mixes readily with air making it fairly neutral.

 

[Chas'n Tail]

So sad to hear this. Prayers to the family. You just never know.

 

[FishSticks]

my ice house has one built in under the table that runs off the power in the house and i have also put one above the door that runs off AA batteries. Sleep with a window cracked and will also run only a electric heater if it is not too cold outside. CO poisoning really freaks me out so I never really sleep well when I spend the nights in there

 

[sl1000794]

maybe this is a dumb question but does carbon monoxide rise or sink?. Just wondering where the best placement for a CO detector would be in a house? ceiling or floor Thanks

Carbon monoxide has an atomic weight of 28 (O=16 and C=12) and oxygen has an atomic weight of 32 (16 + 16), so they are very close. But since carbon monoxide is lighter and is produced by combustion, the gas will be hotter than the air around it and will rise slightly. The common thinking is to place the CO monitor units at around head height or above so that the monitors will be exposed to the air that you are breathing. That's where we placed them in the apartments that we built that had interior wall furnaces.

Back in the '80's we lost 3 young men that worked for a landscape contractor that was doing a project for us. They had gone on a deer hunting trip into the Sierra's and got caught/stuck in an early freak snow storm. They were in a pickup with a camper and ran out of propane. They used a charcoal hibachi for heat in the camper and all lost their lives.

I see where guys have written on here that they experience headaches and attribute it to CO poisoning and I believe that they have had the headaches, but CO poisoning is called "The Silent Killer" because you never know that you are experiencing it. Your O2 saturation goes down as your blood doesn't carry enough oxygen to your cells and you simply pass out and eventually die from oxygen starvation. People out here in the SF Bay area that have been exposed to CO poisoning and survived are taken to the Pacific Grove recompression chamber (primarily used for dive related "bends" incidents) and are subjected to pressurization and treated with 100% oxygen to rid the body of the CO.

 

[sl1000794]

Most of you are too young to remember or participate in the Hibachi craze of the 70s. Small little grills fired by charcoal that people would use in their kitchens for grilling. Lots of folks met their maker from the resulting fumes w/o adequate ventilation.

The only thing that you can use inside your house safely other than an electric grill is the sterno can type heat that some Vietnamese restaurants use to heat a water pot at your table for a type of cooking that is primarily theirs. Sterno must have more petroleum products in the fuel (the flame is ALWAYS blue) so that there is never a chance that there will be a shortage of O2 that could produce CO. I have eaten in this type of restaurant out here in the Bay Area many times.

 

[guywhofishes]

anything that involves burning/flame can produce CO

pretty sure sterno is NOT safe

 

[3Roosters]

Sorry for your loss. Didn't something like this happen to a family of 4 from Iowa vacationing in a rental townhouse near Tulum, Mexico just a few weeks back? Mom and Dad and their 2 kids? All dead. Perhaps I am mistaken but thought I recalled it being gas related. Bad deal .

Results just in what happened here.
The initial autopsies, conducted in nearby Playa del Carmen, show the four Iowans died of asphyxiation from propane inhalation, he said. The water heater in the condominium, which used liquid propane for fuel, had rusted in the humid Caribbean climate.
“There was a leak, and it was coming right from the laundry room,” he said through an interpreter. “The laundry room had no ventilation whatsoever.”