Please don't die from Carbon Monoxide poisoning!

[Tom]

I know this is a bit depressing and I'm not normally one to tell everyone else how to live but there has been mention of Carbon Monoxide poisoning on a couple of threads recently. It made me think that so many of on here have stoves, open fires, mutli fuel ranges etc., not to mention gas appliances, and I just wanted to say please, please, please, if you haven't already, please get a Carbon Monoxide detector. I've just bought two from Amazon for only 20-ish pounds each after the stark reminder on here and £20 is nothing to save your life. I'm sorry if this comes over as 'preaching' (it's certainly not meant to, though) but if it saves just one person then I'll take all the stick you can give me for posting it

 

[Penners]

Good advice, Jaqy, and timely. It's worth adding that the dangers are not limited to fossil fuel burning. Woodburners can also be a CO hazard.

 

[skier-hughes]

I've got one and it went off when we had all those very high winds. We had Jo's woodburner going during the day, letting it run down in the evening. At 3.14am the CO detector went off, the very high wind was just at the right speed to push the air back down the chimney and force it out of the closed woodburner.

We opened the window in Jo's office slightly, checked the lounge, all fine and then took the detector up to the bedroom which was fine and kept it with us in case.

I'm getting another one or two now we are lighting the fires regularly and the rayburn will have to go on, Kitchen finished or not

 

[FamilyWiggs]

Jaqy - your nagging has worked.

Just bought two.

 

[Tom]

Good news, FW! I'm happy people are reading this in the spirit it was meant

 

[CatherineB]

Hear hear, thanks Jaqy.

 

[philpjuk100]

I have a friend who used to live in married quarters at cranwell,after a bbq it seemed a shame to waste the heat on his still warm wheeled bbq so he took it through the french windows into the living room and went to bed,he found in the early hours of the morning that neither he nor his wife were able to stand up but he had his mobile phone by the bed so phoned his CO (no not that type!) who broke in and got them and their daughters to the medical center.He has now left the RAF but his present house bristles with monoxide detectors.He told me that there was no warning and at the time his "illness" was a mystery.Nasty stuff this CO(no not that type).Take care,I have a detector,do you?

 

[Flyfisher]

Some interesting reading here - especially if you believe your house is haunted (really!): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_monoxide_poisoning

 

[jocelyn plummer]

oddly enough I had been thinking about getting one, so it is now written down on my pre christmas list.

 

[Tom]

@ Phil....God, your friend was extremely lucky!! And with children in the house, too :shock:

@ FlyFisher....That's really interesting. So, many of the 'cranks' who say they live with ghosts in their houses could actually be suffering chronic exposure :shock: That's more scary than having a 'real' ghost.

@ Jocelyn....Excellent! The sooner the better

 

[LadyArowana]

We all have to die of something and compared to some other ways I don't think going to sleep and not waking up is really that bad. Once I feel I am past my sell by date I shall have someone disconnect mine and hope for the best :lol:

 

[Penners]

We all have to die of something and compared to some other ways I don't think going to sleep and not waking up is really that bad. Once I feel I am past my sell by date I shall have someone disconnect mine and hope for the best

An interesting slant on the topic, Milady. It sounds as though you plan on introducing a fun element of chance into your ultimate demise. If it doesn't work out, perhaps Russian Roulette might be a viable alternative?

 

[Feltwell]

It's not something to be taken lightly. 5 years ago, my sister-in-law's parents came back from a holiday. They got home quite late and the house was cold, the wife was tired and went straight to bed. The husband decided to get the solid fuel boiler for the heating system going, then settled down to have a whisky before turning in for the night.

His wife woke up at 3am, realised he wasn't in bed, thought he must have nodded off in his armchair downstairs and decided to leave him to it. She went downstairs at 8am the next day to find him dead and the cat unconscious - the cat survived but was brain damaged and was put down a few days later. A faulty boiler that hadn't been properly serviced in a long time.

 

[Flyfisher]

That's a scary, and very sad, story. I often fall asleep on the sofa in front of an open fire, especially after a glass or two of wine, and Mrs FF never bothers to investigate either (I think she revels in the lack of snoring ). I've always assumed that an open fire doesn't produce CO as it's difficult to imagine how such a fire could be oxygen-restricted, except in the most extreme of draught-proofed houses, but it is only an assumption.

I'm not a great fan of the nanny state but I can see some sense in making CO detectors mandatory for stove installations and the like. And for automatic heating appliances, it surely wouldn't be particularly expensive to build boilers with a built-in CO detector and a cut-out mechanism.

 

[AMc]

My brother in law narrowly escaped with his life after he and two friends decided to use a dodgy gas grill to make a meal after a long night of drinking. He's gone to sleep in the back bedroom, his two friends staying in the room with the grill. A neighbour broke in the following morning when she couldn't get them to answer the door but could see them through the window, both friends were dead and he was air lifted to Portsmouth to spend time in a navy decompression chamber to deal with the effects.

 

[AMc]

I'm not a great fan of the nanny state but I can see some sense in making CO detectors mandatory for stove installations and the like. And for automatic heating appliances, it surely wouldn't be particularly expensive to build boilers with a built-in CO detector and a cut-out mechanism.

The sensor would need to be maintained and serviced just like the boiler, if you don't look after one then the other wouldn't help much I imagine.
The instructions for our CO sensor also show it needs to be positioned near but not directly on the appliance - so perhaps it wouldn't work properly within the case?

Our last oil boiler gave up a few weeks after we moved in. The engineer got it running and then showed the toxic level of CO it was feeding into the utility room. He pointed to the step up into the main house and the leaky old door into the unrenovated back of the house and told me that the combination had probably saved us from a serious accident.

 

[Flyfisher]

Fair point about the maintenance requirement, but then such appliances are supposed to be regularly serviced anyway. I accept such a mechanism wouldn't be foolproof (what is?) but it might make things much safer. I'd like to think the industry has considered such things and that there's a good reason against it - your point about positioning perhaps?

@ FlyFisher....That's really interesting. So, many of the 'cranks' who say they live with ghosts in their houses could actually be suffering chronic exposure :shock: That's more scary than having a 'real' ghost.

Yes, I hadn't previously heard about the connection with CO, although I've long been a firm believer in ghosts and similar 'paranormal' experiences - or rather a firm believer that people really do 'see' and 'experience' such things.

 

[Tom]

I think Derek Acorah needs to get his boiler checked......pronto!!! :lol:

 

[biffvernon]

Of the 499 CO related deaths recorded between September 1995 and August 2008 on the this database gas was the most common fuel with less than a third being 'solid fuel' of which I guess very few were wood. However, CO alarms are now compulsory under the Building Regs from October 2010 for rooms with new or replacement woodstoves.

 

[skier-hughes]

Slightly off topic, but our fire brigade have been doing some consultative work with the community which I've been helping with.
One of the items is "Should BR make all new builds have sprinkler systems fitted?"
Sounds like a good idea, but my question to them was, how many house fires/deaths do you go to due to a poorly maintained smoke alarm, what makes you think an expensive - compared to £2 battery - to maintain sprinler system will still be working after year 1?